Simple guide towards event happening in Russia in January 2021 for non-Russian citizens

I. What is going on?

Alexei Navalny ( "I am not afraid and you don't be")

The agents were developed at the GosNIIOKhT state chemical research institute by the Soviet Union and Russia between 1971 and 1993. In November 2019, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which is the executive body for the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), added the Novichok agents to "list of controlled substances" of the CWC "in one of the first major changes to the treaty since it was agreed in the 1990s" in response to the 2018 poisonings in the UK.

<aside> 💡 How do we know Russian authorities are behind it?

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There are some cases happening in the past with some similar "features" and accusations have been against the Russian authorities:

  1. In 2018, Petr Versilov, a Russian political activist, a member of the protest-art group Pussy Riot, hospitalized in Berlin, Charité hospital, where the medical team confirmed the probability of poisoning. Versilov claimed that he was poisoned by Russian authorities.

“I was in exactly the same condition,” Mr. Verzilov said in an interview Thursday with Rain TV, an independent Russian television station, of his monthlong illness in 2018 ( on the poisoning of Navalny )

https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/we-now-know-more-about-the-apparent-poisoning-of-the-pussy-riot-member-pyotr-verzilov

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/20/world/europe/navalny-poison-russia-kremlin.html

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-45658983

  1. In 2018, the poisoning of Sergei Skripal, a former Russian military officer and double agent for the British intelligence agencies, and his daughter, Yulia Skripal took place in Salisbury, England. According to UK sources and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW),the poisoning was by means of a Novichok nerve agent.

On 5 September 2018, British authorities identified two Russian nationals, using the names Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, as suspected of the Skripals' poisoning, and alleged that they were active officers in Russian military intelligence.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-47174809

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/sep/06/novichok-poisoning-timeline-qa

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/sep/05/novichok-poisoning-what-we-know-so-far

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tShYh5bjMN8

Some of the people involved in the crime confessed not only intentions but said that it was a "failure" that Navalny didn't die after the exposure during the call when Navalny pretended to be the superior of one of the people involved in the operation