A Hungarian export on the Navalny poisoning
September 10th, 2020A political analyst is certain that the Russian opposition leader was poisoned by state actors but doesn’t believe that the Kremlin is directly responsible.
In a podcast on Mandiner, András Rácz, a Hungarian analyst who works as a research fellow at the Germany Society of Foreign Policy, explains that the poison found in the blood of Alexei Navalny is a military agent which can only be used by people who have access to secret military-grade stocks. He cautions however against automatically deducing that the poisoning was ordered by the highest echelons of the Kremlin. The Russian ruling élite is far from homogeneous, he says, and rivalries among its various groups might explain this attempt on Navalny’s life, despite the perfectly foreseeable punitive western reaction. There may be groups within the élite, Rácz continues, which are interested in deteriorating relations with the West or weakening groups which entertain good relations with western entities. A less complicated explanation, he raises, concerns Navalny’s local election campaign in Siberia which might harm the interests of one particular power group.