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Nearly half of Russians believe Navalny’s poisoning fake or 'provocation' by West, poll shows

Thursday, 24 December 2020 3:35 PM [ Last Update: Thursday, 24 December 2020 4:05 PM ]

Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny is seen in this file photo. (Photo by EPA)

A new poll has found that only 15% of Russians believe that their government had poisoned the Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny to get rid of a political opponent.

The poll, released by the Levada-Center on Thursday, showed that half of Russians believe Navalny was not poisoned or his poisoning was stage-managed by Western intelligence services.

Navalny, 44, collapsed during a domestic Russian flight on August 20 and was taken to a local hospital. He was airlifted to Berlin on August 22 and is still in Germany.

Germany has claimed that the Russian opposition figure had been poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent, but the Russian doctors who tested Navalny's blood for poisoning before he was moved to Germany said at the time that the test results had come back negative.

The Russian government has denied any involvement in any attack on Navalny, who was discharged from a Berlin hospital in September.

Russia slaps retaliatory sanctions on EU officials over Navalny case

Russia imposes retaliatory sanctions against a number of European officials in response to punitive measures issued by the European Union (EU) against Moscow over the case of Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny.

The new poll also showed that 30% of Russians thought the incident was stage-managed and that there was no poisoning, while 19% said they believed it was a provocation orchestrated by Western intelligence services.

It also showed that 7% thought it was revenge by someone he had targeted in one of his anti-corruption investigations.

Back in October, EU foreign ministers had agreed to support a French-German proposal to slap sanctions on several Russian military intelligence officials over Navalny’s case.

Russia, in response, announced retaliatory sanctions against a number of European officials on Tuesday over their “confrontational” actions.

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