3,580 Followers, 206 Following, 554 Posts - See Instagram photos and videos from Штаб Навального | Владивосток (@teamnavalny_vl) Team Navalny’s office in Samara also came under attack: “Apparently, the troll factory has been repurposed and is now working to get pages blocked.”. Reportedly, fake users also began targeting the social media accounts of various Team Navalny offices across the country. The plastic water bottle, Mr. Navalny’s team and German investigators say, eventually helped German military scientists determine that the opposition leader had been poisoned with a class of chemical weapon called a Novichok, a Soviet-designed poison that Russian operatives have used in at least one previous assassination attempt. According to Open Russia, the other accounts subject to the attack also saw an influx of about 3,000 suspicious followers. “Some hellish influx of bots on Instagram. Given the substance used, the German authorities and others say there is no doubt that the Russian government was behind the poisoning, a breach of the Chemical Weapons Convention to which it is a signatory. “At that moment, they did the one thing that was possible,” the statement said. The independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta reported a bot attack on its Instagram, as well. The office’s staff then proceeded to lock their account temporarily. An analysis by German military scientists at the Institute for Pharmacology and Toxicology in Munich found traces of a nerve agent in the Novichok family in Mr. Navalny’s blood and urine, as well as on one of the bottles. He and his team seemed to be bracing for an attempt on his life. “Yesterday we opened the headquarters in Makhachkala, and today our coordinator Eduard Atayev has gone missing. Aides of the Russian opposition leader collected items from his hotel room in Siberia as soon as he fell ill, according to a video posted on his Instagram account. In a video posted on Instagram, members of Mr. Navalny’s team swiftly donned rubber gloves and scoured his room at the Xander Hotel in Tomsk, packing evidence into blue plastic bags. These arrests and disappearances have been accompanied by searches of the Team Navalny headquarters in St. Petersburg and Voronezh, while … MBX Media also specified that the bots mainly followed their regional pages, though their main account was receiving an average of two follow requests per minute. His continued existence even fueled conspiracy theories that he was in fact a government puppet, paid to play the role of an opposition figure, while never actually seeking power himself. Putin's 'love child', 17, follows ALEXEI NAVALNY on Instagram – and is regularly trolled about having Vladimir for a father. Since then, Dozhd has set its Instagram account to private and decided to review each new follower request manually. Why do they even do this?”, Alexey Navalny’s boldest investigation yet describes a vast network of shell companies and frontmen working to build and sustain Vladimir Putin’s supposed seaside getaway, Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation investigates the Russian president’s billion-dollar residence on the Black Sea, Meduza demands Alexey Navalny’s immediate release from prison, Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov fields questions about Alexey Navalny’s arrest. The rush to grab evidence suggests that Mr. Navalny and his team had been prepared for the eventuality that there would be an attempt on his life. 159 Followers, 400 Following, 492 Posts - See Instagram photos and videos from Vasya_Navalny_Official (@vasya_navalny) This comes after his Anti-Corruption Foundation published a major investigation about a billion-dollar luxury mansion built for Vladimir Putin on the Black Sea. The bot attacks began after Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation published a major investigation into a billion-dollar “palace” supposedly built for Russian President Vladimir Putin on the Black Sea. Aleksei Navalny Was Poisoned at His Hotel, His Team Says, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/17/world/europe/aleksei-navalny-poisoning-water-bottle-russia.html. Navalny, 44, had started refusing food on March 31 in order to pressure the prison authorities to provide him with medical assistance for the acute pain in his legs and back. “It’s all hands on deck at the troll factory! A water bottle that was found in a hotel room where the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny stayed before being poisoned contained traces of Novichok, his aides claimed Thursday.. Based on the German findings, Mr. Navalny’s team, according to the Instagram post, now believes that he was poisoned in that hotel room, not at the airport as they had originally suspected. A video posted on Navalny’s Instagram account on Thursday showed members of his team inspecting his hotel room in Tomsk before he left the city on Aug. 20 and collapsed on a flight home. A video posted on Navalny’s Instagram account on Thursday showed members of his team in plastic gloves inspecting his hotel room in Tomsk shortly after … If those results confirm the German, French and Swedish findings, the German government would move quickly to impose financial sanctions on Russia through the European Union, according to a senior German security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. Create an account or log in to Instagram - A simple, fun & creative way to capture, edit & share photos, videos & messages with friends & family. Georgy Alburov, an employee of Alexey Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), was one of the first to report an influx of suspicious new followers. The civil society organization Open Russia has been targeted too, as have the independent media outlets Novaya Gazeta, Dozhd, and MBX Media, as well as its regional affiliates. “A lot of fake accounts subscribe to an account and then, apparently, they plan to file a massive number of complaints with the aim of [getting] an automatic response from Instagram and blocks,” Klimarev explained. Dit bericht bekijken op Instagram Een bericht gedeeld door Алексей Навальный (@navalny) Navalny Team Alleges Novichok Found in Hotel Water Bottle Navalny fell ill on a flight from Siberia to Moscow on Aug. 20 and was flown to Germany, where he … Imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is beginning to lose feeling in his hands, his lawyer has said. MBX Media also reported that “inactive users with similar names” began following their Instagram — and the accounts of their regional affiliates — en masse on Wednesday night, noting that the users’ Instagram handles “almost always included numbers.” The outlet responded by setting all of their accounts to private temporarily. Russia has insisted since Mr. Navalny first fell ill that he was not poisoned, and has instead offered a number of alternative theories, like he had been using cocaine or that he had low blood sugar and simply needed to eat some candy. Such statements convinced Mr. Navalny’s team that the Russian authorities had no interest in conducting a real investigation. Indeed, at meetings with supporters around Russia, he was frequently asked how he remained alive, given his vicious criticism of the Kremlin and Russia’s most powerful figures. On Aug. 20, those doubts were put to rest when Mr. Navalny began choking and screaming on a flight to Moscow from the Siberian city of Tomsk. Eduard isn’t picking up his phone and the last time he was online was yesterday at around 15:00. Thousands of bots descended upon the Instagram accounts of Russian opposition figures — and several independent media outlets — on the night of Wednesday, January 20. “We don’t doubt our own result,” the official said. A video posted on Navalny’s Instagram account on Thursday showed members of his team in plastic gloves inspecting his hotel room in Tomsk shortly after he left the city on Aug. 20 and collapsed on a … ... Navalny’s team said in a tweet. Mikhail Klimarev, the director of the “Internet Protection Society,” shared this theory on his Telegram channel ZaTelekom. Several thousand bots joined our Instagram. When Mr. Navalny was flown from a Siberian hospital to Berlin on Aug. 22, the evidence went with him. It is unclear how Mr. Navalny’s team was able to sneak the bottle and other items out of the country without the Russian officials knowing. He also invited anyone who has been blocked from the platform to contact him for help. “We’re sure that this is being done in the lead-up to the 23rd, in order to block our work,” Novaya Gazeta wrote on Twitter, referring to the countrywide rallies in support of Navalny planned for this upcoming Saturday (in Moscow, a “Free Navalny!” rally is set to begin at Pushkin Square at 2:00 p.m. on Saturday, January 23). The president’s spokesman has denied all reports about “Putin’s palace.” All the same, the video version of the investigation racked up 25 million views within 24 hours of its release.