Alexei Navalny declares case solved after media out his alleged poisoners

Moscow: Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny has declared his poisoning case solved after a joint media investigation said it had identified a team of assassins from Russia’s FSB security service as his would-be killers, who had stalked him for years.

There was no immediate comment from the FSB, the main domestic security successor to the Soviet-era KGB. The Kremlin has repeatedly rejected any suggestion that Russia tried to kill Navalny, one of President Vladimir Putin’s leading critics, who collapsed on a domestic Russian flight in August.

Navalny was airlifted for medical treatment to Germany after the incident, where he remains. German Chancellor Angela Merkel says he was poisoned with a Soviet-style Novichok nerve agent in an attempt to murder him, an assertion many Western nations accept.

Citing flight records and metadata and geo-location data from mobile phones, investigative website Bellingcat and Russian media outlet The Insider published results of a joint investigation on Monday carried out in co-operation with Der Spiegel and CNN.