A joint investigation between Bellingcat and The Insider, in cooperation with Der Spiegel and CNN, has discovered voluminous telecom and travel data that implicates Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) in the poisoning of Alexey Navalny.

The August 2020 poisoning in the Siberian city of Tomsk appears to have happened after years of surveillance, which began in 2017 shortly after Navalny first announced his intention to run for president of Russia.

Data shows that operatives from a clandestine FSB unit, specialized in working with poisonous substances, shadowed Navalny during his trips across Russia in 2017, 2019 and 2020, traveling alongside him on more than 30 overlapping flights to the same destinations.

Navalny also believes he was victim of previous poisoning attempts, including one in the Western Russian city of Kaliningrad only a month before the near-fatal Novichok poisoning in Siberia.

Our investigation identified three FSB operatives from this clandestine unit who traveled alongside Navalny to Novosibirsk and then followed him to the city of Tomsk where he was ultimately poisoned.