MOSCOW, September 17./TASS/. Russia reacts negatively to Germany’s secretly passing to its partners biomaterials of Alexey Navalny from the Charite hospital in Berlin, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a commentary on Thursday, stressing that Germany refused to cooperate with Moscow on that case.
"It is clear that this was done with political implications, so that Paris and Stockholm automatically confirm unfounded accusations that Berlin hurls at Russia," it said.
The ministry mentioned in this connection Sweden’s actions in 2018, in the so-called Skripal case. "In the wake of ongoing hysteria in the West around the ‘Skripal case’, Sweden was assuring us that the research lab at the Defense Research Agency in the Swedish city of Umea, that has now confirmed the alleged ‘poisoning’ of Navalny, did not have and could not have any samples of Novichok," it said.
"Now, as it happens, Swedish specialists have turned out to be competent to determine 100-percent sure the presence of that toxic agent in biomaterials of the Russian blogger," the commentary said.
The ministry also pointed to the activity of a group of French—Anglo-Saxon officials among the leadership of the OPCW Technical Secretariat, who carried out ‘a secret operation’ to take Navalny’s biomaterials and pass them for the tests to two laboratories designated by the organization. "We won’t be surprised if these will be the labs in Swiss Spiez and British Porton Down, that were already featured in the ‘Skripal case’," the ministry added.
"We have to state with regrets that countries of the West have overstepped all marks, turning the once reputed OPCW into a dirty instrument for putting into practice their destructive plots," the ministry summed up.
On August 20, a plane carrying Navalny made an emergency landing in the Russian city of Omsk after the blogger had suddenly felt unwell in mid-flight. Navalny was taken to the hospital in a coma and was hooked up to a ventilator. On August 22, he was flown to Germany for treatment at Berlin’s Charite hospital.
On September 2, the German government said, citing the results of a toxicological analysis by Bundeswehr experts, that Navalny had been allegedly poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent. On Monday, Berlin claimed that three EU laboratories, including those in France and Sweden, had confirmed the German conclusions. According to the German Foreign Ministry, the OPCW experts also took samples from Navalny, forwarding them to the organization’s reference laboratories.
Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said later that Russia was ready for comprehensive cooperation with Germany. He noted that before Navalny was transferred to Berlin, no toxic substances had been found in his system. For her part, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that the German Foreign Ministry had not provided any evidence of the alleged poisoning to the Russian ambassador.