MOSCOW, September 5. /TASS/. Russia’s National Medical Chamber has called on Germany’s Medical Association to set up a joint group of experts to assess the condition of Russian blogger Alexei Navalny, Leonid Roshal, the chamber’s President, told reporters on Saturday.
"Many are concerned about Navalny’s fate, so the National Medical Chamber has called on the German Medical Association <…> to establish an expert group in order to look into the main cause of Navalny’s state," Roshal said.
According to the doctor, the National Medical Chamber expects that Russian toxicologists could discuss with their German counterparts whether Navalny has indications of poisoning, as Germany alleges.
"If it turns out that Navalny was really poisoned, we believe it necessary to open a criminal case in Russia," Roshal noted.
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. Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Russia stayed 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.
The Russian Foreign Ministry stated that Moscow was still waiting for a reply from Germany to the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office’s request. The ministry’s spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, said that the German Foreign Office had not provided the Russian ambassador with any proof of its version of the incident.
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 Berlin and admitted to the Charite hospital.