Probing Possible Poisoning
Plus: the continuing influx of migrants strains the Hochul-Adams relationship
The FBI and German investigators are probing the possible poisoning of two Russian journalists and a Russian activist based in the U.S. and Europe and critical of the Kremlin, according to people familiar with the investigations.
As I reported last week in The Wall Street Journal, the three women have produced work critical of Russian President Vladimir Putin and the war in Ukraine. In interviews, they described a sudden onset of symptoms including abdominal pain, headaches and fatigue.
Prosecutors in Berlin say they are investigating a complaint by Elena Kostyuchenko, who said she became suddenly ill on a train from Munich to Berlin. She sought treatment in the German capital and still experiences fatigue that prevents her from working for more than a few hours at a time, she said. A radio journalist, Irina Babloyan, said she became ill in Tbilisi, Georgia, and was also treated in Berlin.
The FBI interviewed Natalia Arno last month and officials are performing toxicology tests on her blood, the people said. Arno is a longtime activist who founded the Free Russia Foundation, which supports civic organizing and produces analyses on Russia, and now lives in Virginia.
None of the women or the investigating authorities have evidence that their illnesses are linked. Nor do they know whether the women were poisoned, what agent might have been used and who might be responsible, according to the people familiar with the investigation. The Kremlin didn’t respond to a request for comment on the three women, their illnesses or the investigations into them.
All three women said they decided to speak about their experiences as a warning to others.
“A lot of my colleagues and independent journalists are all over the world, and they have to be very attentive,” Babloyan told me. “It’s weird, because a lot of us came to Europe and feel like we’re safe now. But we’re not.”
MEANWHILE IN NEW YORK: Gov. Kathy Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams promised to be better partners than their predecessors. As my colleagues Erin Ailworth and Liyan Qi wrote in the Journal, a migrant crisis—and who is to blame for it—is testing their resolve.
As the job of housing migrants—required because of a decades-old legal obligation to shelter people in need—gets harder, Adams and other local officials have increasingly turned their frustration at Hochul. Those critics, as well as housing and homelessness advocates, say she has led an inadequate state response to the crisis. She has hit back that Adams was slow to take her up on offers to help.
Much of the criticism has centered on the lack of a statewide plan to address the hundreds of migrants flowing into New York City daily. It was this past May, roughly a year after the city began seeing an uptick in migrant arrivals, that Hochul declared the situation a state disaster emergency. She has allocated $1.5 billion to supporting migrants, as well as four sites for shelters that are either on state-owned land or state-funded, like one on Randall’s Island.
THE QUESTION: I took a quick trip to this city in Austria, where everything is named after famous composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. What city is it?
Know the answer? Drop me a line at jimmy.vielkind@gmail.com. Or just write with thoughts, feedback or to say hi.
THE LAST ANSWER: You can go surfing in Munich’s Englischer Garten! There’s a permanent wave on the Eisbach.