Finian Cunningham
The Brits are past masters in the dark arts of propaganda. The poison frog is their style. But this time, it's croaking with contrivance.
If Russia wanted to kill Western intelligence asset Alexei Navalny while in prison, it could have used all sorts of devious methods to simply bump him off.
Russian state agents could have laced his prison rations or water with the notorious Soviet-era chemical weapon Novichok, or faked a suicide by self-strangulation. Or feigned a head trauma incurred by him slipping on a bar of soap.
Navalny died in 2024 aged 49 while in a Siberian penal colony serving 19 years for convictions over extremism and corruption. The Russian authorities claimed his death was due to natural causes. He was complaining of ill-health.
At the weekend, five European governments have revived accusations made by Navalny's widow that he was murdered on the orders of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden issued a joint statement alleging that Navalny was poisoned with an exotic toxin produced by a South American frog. The natural chemical, known as epibatidine, is found in the skin of the dart frog that is native to Peru and Ecuador.
Why this exotic means of killing ? Well, of course, a tongue-in-cheek answer is that Navalny seemed to have superhuman resistance to Novichok, the Soviet-era chemical weapon that Russia allegedly used to try to assassinate a double agent, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter in the English town of Salisbury in 2018. Novichok is supposed to be so toxic that a mere drop on one's skin is enough to kill. Mysteriously, the Skripals have vanished, and the British authorities have never accounted for their whereabouts.
Two years after the Salisbury saga, Navalny was supposedly attacked with Novichok in August 2020 while on an internal flight in Russia. Russia permitted the stricken Navalny to travel on to Germany for medical treatment, whereupon German military intelligence discovered he had Novichok in his body. Such a claim begs incredulity. There was no independent verification of the finding. Also, Navalny apparently survived and returned to Russia a few months later in rude health when he was arrested on corruption charges.
So you see, dear readers, British intelligence and their NATO counterparts couldn't very well use the old Novichok story again because their champion dissident was apparently resistant to the deadly Novichok.
Hence, the exotic frog poison story.
In an incisive assessment , independent Canadian lawyer and writer Dmitri Lascaris makes the important point that the lethal frog toxin has an intended propaganda value. It is sensational and headline-grabbing, so it makes for good news fodder. On the face of it, it is also such a remote source of poison that only a powerful state agency could obtain it. For added propaganda value, the bizarre method is intended to trigger a stereotype depiction of the Russian leader as a James Bond-type villain. Oh, how evil ! The whiff of theatrics belies the orchestration of public manipulation.
There are other reasons to be skeptical about the latest Western claims.
The "joint statement" coincided with the Munich Security Conference at the weekend, which was held with its usual theme of rallying Western support for the NATO proxy war in Ukraine against Russia. The timing is also the second anniversary of Navalny's death on February 16, 2024. That lends a convenient topicality and way to emote the passing of the "brave dissident" whom Western media had deified. He was actually believed to be on the MI6 and CIA payroll to operate as a professional gadfly towards the Russian government.
The Western intelligence accusations against Russia over Navalny's death do not explain how a sample from his corpse was obtained to perform a toxicological analysis. The joint statement by the five NATO governments claims that the finding of lethal frog poison was based on two years of research. Why did it take two years to announce with such punctuality?
There is no verifiable information about the laboratories that supposedly carried out the analysis. No names or locations. No chain of custody for the purported samples.
In other words, the Western public is expected to believe the word of Western intelligence agencies as a matter of trust. These agencies have zero credibility due to their multiple abuses and wrongdoing.
There are the same intelligence agencies that have been directing the corrupt NeoNazi Kiev regime to wage a proxy war against Russia for the past four years, a regime and a war that are running badly towards defeat.
The other factor is the Epstein pedophile scandal that has exposed Western ruling classes as complicit in the most vile and depraved crimes against children. European government ministers and royals have been implicated in an obscene network, along with American politicians, bankers, tech entrepreneurs, academics, and celebrities. The entire Western establishment has been outed as a rotten house of cards for which there are no prosecutions or public accountability.
It seems obvious that British intelligence took the lead on the latest twist in the Navalny psy-ops. The Brits innovated the Novichok narrative in 2018, just before the World Cup tournament was due to begin in Russia, and back then, there were scripted calls by the then Foreign Secretary and pathological liar Boris Johnson for an international boycott.
The Brits are past masters in the dark arts of propaganda. The poison frog is their style. But this time, it's croaking with contrivance.
Former editor and writer for major news media organizations. He has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published in several languages