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Lavrov tells French counterpart that Navalny case politicization is inadmissible

The top diplomat recalled that the Russian side is yet to receive a response to the official request from the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office

MOSCOW, October 5. /TASS/. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told his French counterpart Jean-Yves Le Drian in a phone call on Monday that attempts to politicize the alleged poisoning of Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny are unacceptable.

"Having pointed out the inadmissible nature of attempts to politicize the case of Alexey Navalny, particularly on the OPCW platform, Lavrov recalled that the Russian side is yet to receive a response to the official request from the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office sent to Paris in the framework of the international mechanism of legal assistance," the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

The diplomatic agency also noted that the ministers had discussed a number of issues on the current agenda.

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.