VIENNA, September 5. /TASS/. It is inappropriate to demand from Moscow that a swift and open investigation be conducted into the incident with Alexei Navalny as there are no facts from Germany, Russia’s Ambassador to Austria Dmitry Lyubinsky told TASS on Friday, commenting on a meeting with Political Director of the Austrian Foreign Ministry Gregor W. Koessler.
According to Lyubinsky, the talks "touched upon ‘Navalny poisoning’ with regard to the EU relevant statement, along with other international and bilateral issues."
"I believe it inappropriate that demands are voiced inducing Russia to conduct a swift, open and comprehensive investigation in absence of any information, facts or tangible data from the German side, as well as in general of any response to questions of the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office in its August 27 request," the Russian ambassador stressed.
On Friday, Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg said that the Russian ambassador had been summoned to the Foreign Ministry.
Navalny was rushed to a local hospital in the Siberian city of Omsk on August 20 after collapsing on the Tomsk-Moscow flight. He fell into a coma and was put on a ventilator in the intensive care unit. On August 22, he was airlifted to the Charite hospital in Berlin.
On Wednesday, the German government claimed that having examined Navalny’s test samples the Bundeswehr’s toxicologists had come to a conclusion that the blogger had been affected by a toxic agent of the Novichok family. Berlin called on Moscow to clarify the circumstances of the incident. Russia stated that it was interested in investigating what had happened to Navalny. Nevertheless, according to the Russian Foreign Ministry, Berlin has not presented any proof of its version of the incident yet.