Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*
LUND, Sweden (IDN) – I begin this column with a declaration that shows my bias: if President Vladimir Putin wanted Alexei Navalny dead, he would be dead. Army sharp-shooters do not miss a sitting target. A bullet in the head would leave an imprint hard to trace, and that would be that. Novichok, a poison, creates a multitude of problems, as we have seen.
Nevertheless, let’s assume the Kremlin was guilty of poisoning Navalny with Novichok. If the authorities had kept him at home nobody would know what had nearly killed him. Then Russia would have been free to invent any cock and bull story, even though they knew it had been Novichok.