An FSB agent linked to a hit squad ordered to kill a top Vladimir Putin foe has vanished and may have been assassinated, according to media reports.
Journalists who unmasked the plot to murder Alexei Navalny by sprinkling his underwear with Novichok now fear for the life of their key source.
FSB operative Konstantin Kudryavtsev, who in his early 40s, was duped into disclosing full details of the sinister plot in a phone call to Navalny who posed as a senior Russian security official.
Leading investigative journalist Christo Grozev said that Putin had been “humiliated” by Kudryavtsev’s confession to Navalny, and for this reason he may have been assassinated by the Russian authorities.
“I am very personally concerned about the fate of Kudryavtsev,” he said on Popular Politics channel, which is linked to Navalny, who is now jailed on what are widely seen as bogus convictions.
“He can't be found anywhere.
“All his relatives have changed telephones.
“Even through them, we cannot trace him. So to be honest, I really hope that he is alive….”
He warned: “It is possible that something radical happened to him so that he was completely eliminated.
“It is possible that Putin's personal resentment played [a role] here.
“I felt it after I saw Kudryavtsev's confession and it is quite possible that he has been eliminated.”
Putin was shown on nationwide TV mocking the claim that the FSB had sought to kill Navalny.
"The intelligence agencies of course need to keep an eye on him,” Putin had said.
“But that does not mean that he needs to be poisoned — who needs him?
“If they had really wanted to, they would have probably finished the job.”
It appeared Putin had not been informed of Kudryavtsev’s unintentional confession when he tried to deny any FSB role, said Grozev.
“It was a personal humiliation for the president,” he said.
“By that time it was known that Kudryavtsev gave an interview in which he denied [the words of] the president.”
Four of the eight-strong hit team have been traced after being “scattered” across Russia after being placed in obscure administrative jobs.
Yet there is no trace of Kudryavtsev, the man whose testimony exposed the FSB plot and proved Putin’s words wrong, and whose job was in the clean-up operation.
“We still continue to look for Kudryavtsev,” said Grozev.
Either he has been banished completely out of sight “or he is dead”.
He said: “We want to know.”
Navalny, seen as Putin’s most charismatic and effective political foe, was almost killed by Novichok after falling violently ill on August 20, 2020 while flying from Tomsk to Moscow.
The plane made an emergency landing in Omsk where he was initially treated before being allowed by Putin to travel to Germany for treatment.
Navalny posed as an official working for senior Putin security apparatchik Nikolai Patrushev, and Kudryavtsev told him the FSB had poisoned his underpants to target his groin area.
"If it [the plane] had flown a little longer and they hadn't landed it abruptly somehow and so on, maybe it all would have gone differently,” said Kudryavtsev, implying that the pilot’s quick thinking saved Navalny’s life after he was poisoned with the Soviet-era radioactive agent.
He would have died “if it hadn't been for the prompt work of the medics, the paramedics on the landing strip, and so on."
The FSB operative said: "I was told to work precisely with the underpants, on the inside.”
His task was to retrieve the Navalny clothes from doctors and police in Omsk, removing key evidence.
