The New Yorker Interview:

From 2023: A deputy to Alexey Navalny discusses his near-fatal poisoning, her own probe of Kremlin corruption, and battling Moscow from exile.

By David Remnick

In the summer of 2020, the most charismatic dissident politician in Russia, Alexey Navalny, was travelling in Siberia, speaking to crowds hungry for a democratic alternative in an authoritarian time. For years, Russian President Vladimir Putin, who had dispensed with plenty of opposition figures and truthtelling journalists, had made life profoundly unpleasant for Navalny and his family, but tolerated him—that is, he countenanced his existence. But there are limits to every tyrant’s patience.

While flying home to Moscow from the city of Tomsk, Navalny fell horribly ill—the result, it turned out, of being poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok. Agents of Russian intelligence had dosed Navalny’s clothing—his underwear—and hoped that he would die during his flight to the capital. Instead, the pilot made an emergency landing in the Siberian city of Omsk, where Navalny received rudimentary treatment. For reasons that remain mysterious, Putin then allowed Navalny, who was in a coma, to be ferried to Germany.

Navalny recovered and assembled his small and loyal inner circle, including Maria Pevchikh. A thirty-five-year-old graduate of Moscow State University and the London School of Economics, Pevchikh now leads a close, devoted team that has carried out remarkably detailed investigations of the gaudy corruption of Putin and his supporters. Pevchikh also participated in a probe of Navalny’s near-death experience. Using phone records, open-access sources, and other means, the group identified the agents who had trailed Navalny to Siberia in order to kill him. Navalny himself called several of them on the telephone. 

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