Kremlin: Navalny Works with CIA

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Kremlin: Navalny Works with CIA Jan 19, 2021 6:20:56 GMT

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Post by Admin on Jan 19, 2021 6:20:56 GMT

The Kremlin on Thursday accused opposition politician Alexei Navalny of working with the CIA after Navalny said he believed President Vladimir Putin was behind the suspected poisoning that put him in a coma in Germany.

It raises the stakes should Navalny fulfil a pledge to return to Russia, and may add to pressure on Western leaders, especially German Chancellor Angela Merkel, to take action over his case.

Navalny responded by saying he would sue Peskov over the accusation, challenging him to present evidence to back it up. His aide Lyubov Sobol called the allegation “complete gibberish”.

Navalny, 44, emerged in recent weeks from a coma after suddenly falling ill in during a flight in Siberia and being air-lifted to Berlin for treatment. German doctors say he was poisoned with novichok, a rare Russian nerve agent.

“I believe that Putin is behind the crime and I don’t have any other versions of what happened,” Navalny told Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine in an interview published on Thursday.

Peskov said Navalny’s allegations against Putin were unacceptable, groundless and insulting.

“It’s not the patient working with Western intelligence, it’s Western intelligence working with him. That would be more accurate. There is such information. I can even say definitely - specialists of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency are working with him currently,” the Kremlin spokesman said.

Western intelligence agencies, namely the US Central Intelligence Agency, are working with blogger Alexey Navalny, Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Thursday.

"It’s not the patient [Navalny] that is working with Western intelligence agencies but Western intelligence agencies are working with him," Peskov said.

"Indeed, there is information about it and I can specify that experts from the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency are working with him," the Kremlin spokesman emphasized.

According to Peskov, it’s not the first time that contacts between Navalny and foreign intelligence agencies have been detected. "It’s not the first time that they are giving instructions to him," he noted. "There is information that instructors [from Western intelligence agencies] are working with him and the patient is clearly getting instructions, we have seen it many times before," the Kremlin spokesman noted.

Russian State Duma (the lower house of parliament) Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin said earlier that Navalny worked with Western intelligence and state agencies and acted in their interests.

Last Edit: Jan 19, 2021 6:22:29 GMT by Admin

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Kremlin: Navalny Works with CIA Jan 22, 2021 5:01:24 GMT

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Post by Admin on Jan 22, 2021 5:01:24 GMT

Poisoned Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny continues to be a thorn in the side of Russian President Vladimir Putin after unearthing the Instagram account of the strongman’s purported 17-year-old love child, according to a report.

Putin, 68, has been linked by Russian outlet Proekt to Svetlana Krivonogikh, a cleaner who is worth more than $100 million and lives in a posh area of St. Petersburg.

Glamorous images of her luxury-loving daughter Elizaveta — also known as Luiza – have emerged online showing the teen sporting a Gucci mask, posing seductively in designer outfits and drinking booze amid the coronavirus pandemic, the Sun reported.

The teen’s Instagram account has been exposed by Navalny, who was taken into custody Sunday night after flying home for the first time since he was poisoned last summer, according to the news outlet.

Her postings reveal her love for top luxury brands including YSL, Bottega Veneta, Miu Miu, Tom Ford, Chanel, Jacquemus, Dolce & Gabbana, Valentino, Alexander Wang and Maison Margiela, the Sun reported.

A video on Luiza’s account shows her dancing with a Russian teen who attended a school in Surrey, England, sparking rumors that she also was educated in the UK, according to the report.

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Kremlin: Navalny Works with CIA Jan 25, 2021 6:30:02 GMT

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Post by Admin on Jan 25, 2021 6:30:02 GMT

Russia has accused Western countries of encouraging rallies in support of opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

Tens of thousands defied a heavy police presence to join the rallies on Saturday. More than 3,500 were detained, monitors say.

But President Vladimir Putin's spokesman the next day claimed only "a few" people had turned out.

European Union foreign ministers meet on Monday to discuss their response, with calls for increased sanctions.

The foreign ministers of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are demanding "restrictive measures against Russian officials responsible for arrests".

Poland's President Andrzej Duda also urged the EU to step up sanctions on Russia following the arrest of Mr Navalny.

Mr Navalny, President Putin's most high-profile critic, called for protests after he was arrested on his return to Russia a week ago.

Demonstrations were held on Saturday in about 100 cities and towns from Russia's Far East and Siberia to Moscow and St Petersburg.

In Moscow, riot police were seen beating and dragging away demonstrators.

Observers say the scale of the demonstrations across the country was unprecedented, while the protest in the capital was the largest in almost a decade.

They appeared to enjoy widespread passive support, with trolley bus passengers waving to the crowds and large numbers of car drivers beeping their horns.

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Kremlin: Navalny Works with CIA Jan 27, 2021 0:45:25 GMT

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Post by Admin on Jan 27, 2021 0:45:25 GMT

Russian President Vladimir Putin denied claims by poisoned Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny that he owns an opulent, billion-dollar palace that was built with fraudulently obtained funds.

The dissident last week alleged in a video that has been viewed by some 86 million people that Putin allies, including oil chiefs and billionaires, paid for the construction of the $1.35 billion Black Sea palace.

It is said to have a casino, skating rink and vineyard.

“Nothing that is listed there as my property belongs to me or my close relatives, and never did,” Putin told students in a video conference Monday, the BBC reported.

The strongman called the video a “compilation and montage” and said he found it “boring.”

Putin, who was quizzed by student Danil Chemezov, 20, in an event marking students’ day, admitted he did not view the entire video due to a “shortage of time,” but that he “flicked through video selections that my aides brought me,” according to East2West News.

His denial came as two Kremlin guards were fired after attending a large protest against him, the outlet reported.

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Kremlin: Navalny Works with CIA Jan 29, 2021 19:43:14 GMT

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Post by Admin on Jan 29, 2021 19:43:14 GMT

Donald Trump was cultivated as a Russian asset over 40 years and proved so willing to parrot anti-western propaganda that there were celebrations in Moscow, a former KGB spy has told the Guardian.

Yuri Shvets, posted to Washington by the Soviet Union in the 1980s, compares the former US president to “the Cambridge five”, the British spy ring that passed secrets to Moscow during the second world war and early cold war.

Now 67, Shvets is a key source for American Kompromat, a new book by journalist Craig Unger, whose previous works include House of Trump, House of Putin. The book also explores the former president’s relationship with the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.

“This is an example where people were recruited when they were just students and then they rose to important positions; something like that was happening with Trump,” Shvets said by phone on Monday from his home in Virginia.

Shvets, a KGB major, had a cover job as a correspondent in Washington for the Russian news agency Tass during the 1980s. He moved to the US permanently in 1993 and gained American citizenship. He works as a corporate security investigator and was a partner of Alexander Litvinenko, who was assassinated in London in 2006.

Unger describes how Trump first appeared on the Russians’ radar in 1977 when he married his first wife, Ivana Zelnickova, a Czech model. Trump became the target of a spying operation overseen by Czechoslovakia’s intelligence service in cooperation with the KGB.

Three years later Trump opened his first big property development, the Grand Hyatt New York hotel near Grand Central station. Trump bought 200 television sets for the hotel from Semyon Kislin, a Soviet émigré who co-owned Joy-Lud electronics on Fifth Avenue.

According to Shvets, Joy-Lud was controlled by the KGB and Kislin worked as a so-called “spotter agent” who identified Trump, a young businessman on the rise, as a potential asset. Kislin denies that he had a relationship with the KGB.

Then, in 1987, Trump and Ivana visited Moscow and St Petersburg for the first time. Shvets said he was fed KGB talking points and flattered by KGB operatives who floated the idea that he should go into politics.

The ex-major recalled: “For the KGB, it was a charm offensive. They had collected a lot of information on his personality so they knew who he was personally. The feeling was that he was extremely vulnerable intellectually, and psychologically, and he was prone to flattery.

“This is what they exploited. They played the game as if they were immensely impressed by his personality and believed this is the guy who should be the president of the United States one day: it is people like him who could change the world. They fed him these so-called active measures soundbites and it happened. So it was a big achievement for the KGB active measures at the time.”

Soon after he returned to the US, Trump began exploring a run for the Republican nomination for president and even held a campaign rally in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. On 1 September, he took out a full-page advert in the New York Times, Washington Post and Boston Globe headlined: “There’s nothing wrong with America’s Foreign Defense Policy that a little backbone can’t cure.”