August 20. For the second time, I’m marking my second birthday—the day they tried to kill me, and for some reason I didn’t die. Just for the record, a dry statement of facts. Two years later: 1. No criminal case has ever been opened, no matter what lies Putin tells. There has been no official investigation. 2. To this day, I still do not understand what the position of Russia’s officials actually is: - Navalny was not poisoned with “Novichok”; he fell into a coma on his own. or - Navalny was poisoned with “Novichok,” but not by us—by Western intelligence services as a provocation. Officials, starting at the very top—with Putin—strictly adhere to both of these versions at the same time. 3. Almost all of the direct participants in the murder squad have been identified. All of them are FSB officers (Russia’s Federal Security Service). It has been proven that they were behind several failed poisoning attempts (Dmitry Bykov, Vladimir Kara-Murza) and several successful murders (Nikita Isaev, Timur Kuashev, Ruslan Magomedragimov). Most likely, this is just the tip of the iceberg. 4. No one from this group of FSB operatives has been held accountable. Except perhaps Konstantin Kudryavtsev—the hapless chemist who told me the details of the assassination attempt over the phone. He disappeared, and it seems he was simply killed himself. 5. The Kremlin was so upset that I survived that it first jailed me for 3.5 years, and then for 9 years. 6. This whole situation exposed both Putin himself and his system so thoroughly, showed not only the criminality but also the dysfunction and failure of his regime so clearly, that it obviously had a major impact on Russia’s entire political system. That system dropped all pretense and by the end of January 2021 had become repressive and authoritarian without any qualifications. That’s what happens when you do a bad job smearing “Novichok” on someone’s underwear.