Western intelligence agencies have accused Vladimir Putin of poisoning the failed opposition leader Alexi Navalny in August. Now, according to The Guardian, these agencies are saying that Putin meant to kill Navalny, but he goofed and gave him the wrong dose of chemical weapons in his tea.
The big picture: It makes absolutely zero sense that Putin would want to kill the opposition leader, and it makes even less sense that a KGB hit squad that was sent to put chemical weapons in his tea would use the wrong dose. This is yet another one of those situations where the media and government are telling you something that is so stupid that it’s almost impossible to believe they’re actually saying it.
- On August 20, Navalny fell ill on a plane ride. He was flown to Germany, where it was said that he’d been poisoned by the Russian state.
- Lab tests allegedly show that the novichok, a Soviet chemical agent, that was allegedly used to poison Navalny was too mild.
- Apparently, they are claiming that Russian secret services make different flavors of chemical weapons, and sometimes they get the flavors confused.
- One time when I was in high school and worked at Pizza Hut, Diet Pepsi started coming out of the normal Pepsi hose. Maybe it was like that.
Go Deeper: I said when this happened and every time I mentioned it afterward that the only people who would want Navalny poisoned are the Western intelligence agencies, and Navalny himself.
- There is no reason to want to kill Navalny.
- If you are an enemy of the West, and you try to have freedom in your country, the West will set up a CIA-backed opposition party to fight against you.
- Russia cannot avoid having an opposition party backed by the West, because they are doing “democracy.”
- Russia would want the opposition to be as ineffective as possible, and Navalny had no support from anyone other than a few drug addicts, sluts and neo-Nazis.
- It would have been hard to replace Navalny, because he was established as the opposition already. He is only in his forties, and was going to hang around for a while.
- Western intelligence would want to replace him with someone more effective.
- If they actually did want to kill him, Russian intelligence would have dozens of ways to kill a man that don’t involve the possibility of getting caught.
Of note: Navalny himself has actively accused Putin of poisoning him. It’s obvious that Navalny himself benefits from this, as he’s gone from a fringe weirdo to an international cause celebré. Presumably, he was in on it and took the poison himself.
What you can’t ask: Who benefits from Navalny being poisoned?
By the numbers: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said that he thinks Putin did this. Pompeo has attempted to start wars with China, Venezuela, Iran, Belarus, and several others. Pompeo’s State Department has also been suspected of being behind uprisings in Thailand and Indonesia, among others.