Kathmandu. Critics of the Russian administration have always had reason to believe that their opinions may lead to unfavorable consequences for them. In the past decades several political opposition members, critics and independent journalists have fallen ill under mysterious circumstances. The Cold War was especially rife with such incidences of attempted assassinations. The New York Times in 1982 published an article detailing the unease and fear created by the Soviet’s main security agency, what was then called the Committee for State Security, or K.G.B.

Alexei Navalny, who has been a vocal critic of the current Russian President, is one amongst the many who have claimed that the state’s intelligence agency is to be held responsible for the poisoning attack on him. He was recently released from a German hospital after being deemed well enough to be discharged. This has resulted in Western states demanding the Kremlin to issue an explanation with regards to the incident. Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) had previously called for sanctioning Russia in September, noting that, “The poison used, belonging to the ‘Novichok group’, can only be developed in state-owned military laboratories and cannot be acquired by private individuals, which strongly implies that Russian authorities were behind the attack.”

According to a Reuter’s report, Navalny has stated that a country-wide sanction could not be a recommended solution. He has appealed to the European Union (EU) to “impose entry bans on profiteers of the regime and freeze their assets.” He particularly took the name of the Chief Conductor of the Munich Philharmonic, Valery Gergiev. Moreover, criticizing the half-hearted efforts by the Russian government in undertaking the investigation, he stressed that the attack was a direct order from the head of the government, Vladimir Putin.

Navalny is still recovering from the effects of the poison and has maintained that he will be returning to Russia. Recalling the trauma of being subjected to the poison, and the taxing recovery process he asserted that, “They’ve been striving for a long time to force me out of the country,” further adding “I don’t know how events will develop, I’m not going to take risks. I have my cause, I have my country.”