Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Jailed Putin foe ‘may die any minute’
Russian duo in Salisbury op accused of attack on arms depot
JAILED Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny risks having a cardiac arrest at “any minute” as his condition has rapidly deteriorated.
President Putin’s biggest opponent went on hunger strike on March 31, demanding treatment for back pain and numbness.
His doctor, Yaroslav Ashikhmin, said: “Our patient can die any minute.”
Navalny, 44, was imprisoned in February and is serving a two-and-a-halfyear sentence on old embezzlement charges.
He had been poisoned with the novichok nerve agent in August 2020, and blamed the Kremlin.
Andrei Kelin, the Russian ambassador to Britain, said: “He will not be allowed to die in prison.”
THE two Russians suspected of the novichok poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter are accused of organising a fatal explosion in the Czech Republic four years earlier.
Czech police issued photos of Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, who were in the country when the blast at an arms depot killed two people.
And the Czech Republic yesterday expelled 18 Russian diplomats, sparking the biggest dispute between the nations since the 1989 revolution.
The matter will be discussed today at a meeting of EU foreign ministers.
The pair are believed to be part of the Russian intelligence unit the GRU.
Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said: “The UK stands in POISON Yulia & Sergei Skripal full support of our Czech allies, who have exposed the lengths that the GRU will go to in their attempts to conduct dangerous and malign operations – and highlights a disturbing pattern of behaviour following the attack in Salisbury.”
In 2018 the pair were identified by Britain as being behind the attempted murder of double agent Skripal, 69, and daughter Yulia, 33, on March 4 by smearing novichok on the door handle of their home in Salisbury, Wiltshire.
Last night a senior Russian parliamentarian called the Czech claim “absurd”.
Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis said the country had to react to revelations tying the blast on October 16, 2014 in Vrbetice to the GRU.
He said: “There is a reasonable suspicion Russian secret agents of the GRU service were involved in the explosions.”
Pictures of the two accused men issued by Czech police match those put out by UK police. It later emerged their real names were Alexander Mishkin and Anatoliy Chepiga.
The Skripals survived but Dawn Sturgess, 44, died after she came into contact with a discarded perfume bottle believed to have been used in the attack.
Moscow has denied involvement.