‘He compares himself to Jesus’: Putin's spokesman says Navalny gripped by ‘megalomania’ after state ‘assassination’ accusations
Alexey Navalny has a persecution complex and believes he is a messiah figure. That's according to Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov, offering a personal opinion rather than speaking on behalf of Vladimir Putin on Tuesday.
The long-time presidential spokesman, who didn't refer to Navalny by name, was talking to reporters after another unexpected twist in the alleged poisoning case, the previous day.
“The patient has a pronounced persecution mania, and we can also clearly establish certain manifestations of megalomania,” Peskov said. “He is even said to compare himself to Jesus.”
Peskov also spoke about “Freudian manifestations,” accusing the activist of having a “fixation on his own crotch.”
The press secretary's comments come after brand new apparent revelations in the case of Navalny's alleged poisoning, last August. Last week, a joint investigation by Russian-language outlet The Insider, along with CNN, Germany's Der Spiegel, and the US and UK-state funded Bellingcat, claimed that the Federal Security Service (FSB) had been tailing Navalny for several years, which eventually led to them poisoning him with the nerve agent Novichok. The opposition figure pointed the finger at President Vladimir Putin, blaming the country's leader for ordering the hit. The accusation has been flatly denied by the Kremlin.
Yesterday, a week after the published allegations, Navalny posted a YouTube video in which he purportedly spoke to Konstantin Kudryavtsev, one of the men he believes is part of a team sent to kill him. In the conversation, the alleged FSB agent reveals that Navalny would probably have died if it were not for the plane's emergency landing and the rapid arrival of an ambulance. The legitimacy of this call has been denied by the FSB, which called it a fake.
“You know, the Federal Security Service commented on this conversation yesterday quite exhaustively and unambiguously,” Peskov noted, also saying that the call is “an attempt to discredit” the service.
Also on rt.com Russian opposition figure Navalny claims he spoke to ‘FSB officer’ who confessed to being part of alleged poison plot last summerLast Thursday, at his annual press conference, Putin claimed that Navalny would be dead if the FSB had truly wanted to murder him. The Kremlin maintains that it still hasn't seen proof of the poisoning, and has accused the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) of refusing to hand over evidence.
On August 20, Navalny fell ill on a flight to Moscow from the Siberian city Tomsk. The plane was forced to emergency land in Omsk, another Russian city, where he was taken to hospital and placed in a coma. After requests from his family and associates he was flown to Berlin's Charité Clinic for treatment. Shortly after arriving in Germany doctors announced that the opposition figure had been poisoned by Novichok. Russian doctors continue to deny that any poisoning took place. On September 23, Navalny was discharged.
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