"Vladimir Putin told his French counterpart: 'Navalny could have swallowed this poison himself.' A good theory. I believe it deserves the closest possible scrutiny. Cooked up some Novichok in my kitchen. Took a quiet sip from a flask on the plane. Slipped into a coma. Before that, I had arranged with my wife, friends, and colleagues that if the Health Ministry insisted on flying me to Germany for treatment, under no circumstances were they to allow it. To die in an Omsk hospital and end up in an Omsk morgue, where the cause of death would be determined as 'had lived long enough'—that was the ultimate goal of my cunning plan. But Putin outplayed me. You can't fool him that easily. In the end, like an idiot, I lay in a coma for 18 days and still didn't get what I wanted. The provocation failed!