MOSCOW, September 18. /TASS/. Germany and other Western countries have most actively "cultivated" the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in the situation with Russian blogger Alexey Navalny, Spokeswoman for Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs Maria Zakharova stated on the Solovyev Live YouTube channel.
She reiterated that Russia’s Permanent Representative to the OPCW Alexander Shulgin had requested the files on the Navalny situation but hasn’t received a definite response yet. "According to our data, the Western partners, these are Germany and a whole number of countries, were cultivating the OPCW at the moment," she said.
The diplomat also noted that Russia hasn’t received "a single coherent" response yet from Germany to the inquires of the Prosecutor-General’s office on the situation around Navalny. "They’ve summoned our ambassador. Our ambassador used the opportunity and said: "When [will we get] the files?" The German side told him that "we do not have an intention not to respond to your inquires." There is no detailed or at least general information: when the information will be provided, in which format, to whom, along which lines - nobody says anything," the diplomat added.
On September 2, the German government said that German military toxicologists had found that Navalny had been exposed to a nerve agent belonging to the Novichok family. On September 14, Berlin stated that three EU labs, including the ones in France and Sweden, confirmed their conclusions. According to Germany’s Federal Foreign Office, Navalny’s samples were also collected by the OPCW experts, they were sent to the organization’s reference labs. Kremlin official spokesman Dmitry Peskov stated that Russia was interested in a comprehensive investigation of the Navalny case and is ready for cooperation with Germany. He noted that before Navalny’s departure to Germany no traces of poisonous substances had been found in his samples.