Alexei Navalny was likely first attempted to be poisoned in early 2017 in Kirov, found out the «Dossier» Center**. This is evidenced by data on the movements of FSB employees, which investigators managed to review. According to these data, during the retrial of the «Kirovles» case, the politician was accompanied by a group of at least seven people, which included the same intelligence officers as in 2020 during the assassination attempt in Tomsk.
The hearings began on December 5, 2016, a week later Navalny announced that he would run for the presidency of the country in the 2018 elections. The verdict was announced on February 8, 2017, and on May 3, the regional court upheld the decision of the lower instance. Meanwhile, on October 18, Stanislav Makshakov, who led the group that poisoned Navalny in 2020 and headed the FSB Institute of Forensic Science in 2025, and his subordinate Mikhail Kuklev, an expert in detecting traces of chemical weapons, came to Kirov for several days. The Institute is closely connected with other research institutes, including the «Signal» center, where work was done on the family of fluorophosphorus organic compounds «Novichok».
Throughout December, Navalny was accompanied on trips between Moscow and Kirov by FSB officer Sergey Filippov, who did not fly on the same flights with him and did not book tickets for the same trains, but used parallel routes.
According to leaked personal data, Filippov was listed in the military counterintelligence department in the Moscow Military District in the early 2010s, then moved to the Service for the Protection of the Constitutional System and the Fight against Terrorism (Second Service of the FSB), and, like many department employees, was registered at the headquarters address on Lubyanka.
From January 2017, a group of officers joined Filippov: Alexei Alexandrov, who participated in the poisoning of Alexei Navalny in August 2020 and flew to Kaliningrad during the alleged poisoning of his wife Yulia, and Konstantin Kudryavtsev, exposed by Navalny, operatives of the Second Service Alexander Samofal and Alexei Krivoshchekov, as well as senior service officers Valery Sukharev and Roman Mezentsev.
Navalny himself said that during one of the trips in 2017 he felt very unwell («So bad that I thought I was going to die»), but after 15 minutes everything passed.
On May 29, 2017, Navalny was expected at the opening of the headquarters in Smolensk, but he delegated this task to his associate Leonid Volkov***, and himself returned the train tickets to prepare for the trial with Alisher Usmanov. Apparently, the operatives did not know about the changed plans, as late in the evening of May 28, Gorokhov, Artemov, and Kotov boarded a train in Moscow and by morning were in Smolensk, in the evening of May 29 they headed back.
As tracked by the «Dossier» center, Kotov accompanied Navalny during trips to Vladivostok, Arkhangelsk, and Astrakhan in the fall of the same year. In Irkutsk in November, Kotov and Artemov were following the oppositionist, Kotov then was with the founder of FBK in Novokuznetsk in December.
At the end of 2017, surveillance most likely ceased. The probable reason is that on December 25, the CEC banned Navalny from running.
A new surge of activity occurred at the beginning of 2019. On February 1, around half-past nine in the morning, Navalny boarded a high-speed train to St. Petersburg in Moscow. At 7 am on February 1, two hours before Navalny, Kotov, Gorokhov, and Panyaev left for St. Petersburg. They stayed in the city until the morning of February 3. On February 4, Roman Mezentsev and Alexander Samofal came to St. Petersburg for a day.
Until now, 22 FSB employees were known to be directly involved in poisonings within Russia. With the officers found by «Dossier», this number increases to 30 people.
* Listed as a «terrorist and extremist».
** Recognized in Russia as a «foreign agent».
*** Recognized in Russia as a «foreign agent», listed as a «terrorist and extremist».