NOT WHOLLY CONVINCING

Belarusian President Makes Up Intelligence and Claims it Proves Navalny’s Poisoning Didn’t Happen

President Lukashenko says he has intelligence that the Russian opposition leader wasn’t poisoned.

If you had to choose one man in the world not to trust at the moment, then Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko—who is widely accused of rigging an election last month—would probably be somewhere near the top. Lukashenko has also been begging President Putin to help him stay in power amid vast street demonstrations demanding he quit, so he owes the Russian president a favor. Global leaders are therefore unlikely to place much stock in Lukashenko’s wild claim Thursday that he has intercepted intelligence proving that Germany falsified its tests showing that Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was poisoned using a Soviet-era Novichok nerve agent. According to the Moscow Times, Lukashenko told the Russian prime minister Mikhail Mishustin at a Thursday meeting: “We intercepted a conversation between Warsaw and Berlin before [Angela] Merkel’s statement… which clearly states that this is a falsification... Navalny was never poisoned.” The embattled president went on to claim that Germany made its announcement “to discourage [Vladimir] Putin from sticking his nose in Belarusian affairs.”