Russian dissident Navalny says he tricked FSB chemist into admitting Kremlin tried to kill him

Moscow's main spy agency blamed unnamed "foreign intelligence services" for helping dissident Alexey Navalny trick a Russian secret operative into admitting that Navalny nearly died over the summer because poison was applied to the activist's underwear.

Navalny on Monday announced that he had contacted an agent for Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) and hoodwinked him into divulging over the phone how a team of Russian would-be assassins tried to kill Navalny with a toxic nerve substance. 

The nerve agent, Novichok, was applied along the seams of Navalny's underwear, the dissident reported.

The revelations posted on Navalny's website drew quick rebuke and counter-accusations from FSB authorities.

"The so-called 'investigation,' published by A. Navalny in the Internet about the actions allegedly taken against him is a planned provocation, aimed at discrediting of the FSB and its employees, which would be impossible, without the organizational and technical support of foreign intelligence services," the FSB told the Russian news agency Tass.

The FSB did not name a specific country nor intelligence agency. Authorities in Moscow previously claimed that Navalny works for the CIA.

The dispute between Navalny and the Kremlin intensified in recent weeks, as the anti-corruption activist publicized the results of a private investigation into why he fell ill in August while flying from Siberia to Moscow. After an emergency landing, Navalny was whisked off the plane and into medical care. He was found to have been poisoned with the deadly nerve agent Novichok, a Soviet-era venom that has been used against other Russian dissidents. 

While recuperating in Germany, Navalny teamed up with a number of organizations, including the British-based Bellingcat group, to find out who administered the poison, and how.

Navalny revealed on Monday that he had prank-called several people whom he suspected of being in on an FSB plot to kill him. Most hung up, until Navalny reached a man he identified as part of the cleanup operation, Konstantin Kudryavtsev, a chemist for the FSB. 

Navalny wrote on his website that he used software to make it appear that he was calling from an FSB phone. Posing as an FSB official, he prodded the chemist into talking about the incident that sent Navalny into emergency medical care.

In a transcript posted on Navalny's website, the chemist speaks in guarded terms, frequently saying that he doesn't know or cannot divulge certain things on the phone. He also reveals nuggets of detail about the operation.

In one portion, Kudryavtsev addresses why Navalny survived.

"If [the plane] had flown a little longer and they hadn't landed it abruptly somehow and so on, maybe it all would have gone differently," he says in the transcript. "That is, if it hadn't been for the prompt work of the medics, the paramedics on the landing strip, and so on."

Russian President Vladimir Putin has vehemently denied that the FSB tried to kill Navalny.

Putin in his annual press conference last week debunked the Bellingcat-led investigation that implicates the FSB in administering the poison.

"This patient in the Berlin clinic has the support of American intelligence agencies," Putin said, refusing to use Navalny's name. "The intelligence agencies of course need to keep an eye on him. But that does not mean that he needs to be poisoned — who needs him? If they had really wanted to, they would have probably finished the job."

The FSB did not respond to a request for comment from Just the News.