Russia’s FSB Second Service, behind Navalny poisoning, also ran doping program
Nation19 April, 09:40 PM
According to the investigation, Dmitry Kovalyov — who appeared in summer 2020 as a forensic expert for the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (NADO) at the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne during hearings on the suspension of Russian athletes — is actually a colonel in the FSB’s Second Service.
While testifying in Lausanne, Kovalyov repeatedly called FSB Major General Vladimir Bogdanov, a key figure in the FSB’s Center for Special Technologies — the same unit that coordinated the poisoning of Navalny.
The Insider reports that since 2015 the “doping project” has been handled by the Signal Scientific Center, which operates under Bogdanov’s effective control. The center began developing banned performance-enhancing substances after former NADO head Grigory Rodchenkov publicly exposed Russia’s doping scheme.
A source familiar with the internal structure of the Signal center told The Insider that although the synthesis of poisons and the production of doping substances were separate programs, the same scientists and the same equipment were used for both projects.
In August 2020 Navalny was poisoned with a Novichok-type nerve agent, a fact confirmed by laboratories in several Western countries after he was flown to Germany for treatment. He died in a Russian penal colony on Feb. 16, 2024 in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug in Russia’s Far North.
According to Navalny’s team, the medical report shown to his mother, Lyudmila Navalnaya, listed the cause of death as natural. Navalny spent the last three years in prison.
In November 2015, the World Anti-Doping Agency found the Russian Anti-Doping Agency to be non-compliant with the code and the Moscow laboratory to be unsuitable for sample analysis. On Nov. 13, 2015, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) suspended the All-Russian Athletics Federation from all international competitions.
In 2016, ahead of the Olympic Games in Rio, the decision regarding the participation of Russian athletes was delegated to individual international federations. In July 2016, the IAAF barred the Russian national track and field team from the Olympics (only one neutral athlete competed). The IOC did not impose a complete suspension on the entire Russian team—the participation of athletes was decided individually by each federation.