Bellingcat, The Insider and CNN investigation of Navalny's poisoners wins Emmy award

A joint investigation by Bellingcat, The Insider and CNN, with contributions from Der Spiegel, into the poisoning of Alexei Navalny won a news and documentary Emmy Award for «outstanding investigative reporting in a newscast.» This is stated on the award's Twitter page.

The investigation was released in mid-December 2020. Its authors found that at least eight FSB officers were involved in poisoning Navalny with the Novichok nerve agent. They were all employees of the FSB Institute of Forensic Science (aka FSB's NII-2 or military unit 34435), which, according to unofficial sources, operates a secret lab that produces poisons for special operations.

Members of the institute's staff had been following Navalny since early 2017, after he announced he would run in the presidential election. They made 47 trips to the destinations Alexei Navalny flew or drove to on the same days, taking parallel flights with the politician.

After the release of the investigation, Navalny called one of the FSB officers featured in the investigation, Konstantin Kudryavtsev, introducing himself as Assistant to Secretary of the Security Council Nikolai Patrushev. In the conversation that followed, Kudryavtsev gave details of Navalny's poisoning. The United States imposed sanctions on nine Russians believed to be involved in the poisoning of Navalny, as well as on the State Research Test Institute of Military Medicine and the FSB Institute of Forensic Science.