BERLIN, October 1. /TASS/. The journalists who laid the groundwork of Germany's Der Spiegel magazine in its early days would have hardly found it appropriate to offer the magazine's pages to groundless allegations by blogger Alexey Navalny, Russia's ambassador in Belin Sergey Nechayev told TASS, when asked for a comment about an interview with Navalny the magazine published on Thursday.
"It is surprising and a reason for sincere disappointment that a magazine that positions itself as an impartial media outlet has published statements containing groundless and insulting allegations against the Russian head of state," Nechayev said. "It is very hard to imagine that the renowned journalists, well-known in our country, who stood at the cradle of this periodical, would have found this cheap stuff worth publishing on its pages."
Navalny was rushed to a local hospital in the Siberian city of Omsk on August 20 after collapsing on a Moscow-bound flight from Tomsk. He fell into a coma and was put on a ventilator in an intensive care unit. On August 22, he was airlifted to Berlin and admitted to the Charite hospital.
On September 2, Berlin claimed that having examined Navalny’s test samples, German government toxicologists had come to the conclusion that the blogger had been affected by a toxic agent belonging to the Novichok family.
Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Russia was ready for comprehensive cooperation with Germany. He pointed out that no poisonous substances had been detected in Navalny’s system prior to his transfer to Berlin.