NOVOSIBIRSK, November 6. /TASS/. The actions of people accompanying Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny in Tomsk in August of this year point to a planned provocation, the Russian Interior Ministry’s Transport Department for the Siberian Federal District informed on its website on Friday.
"It was also determined during the inquiry that after receiving the reports of Navalny’s deterioration of health, the group of people accompanying him in Tomsk (Vladlen Los, Maria Pevchikh and Georgy Alburov) removed three plastic water bottles from Navalny’s hotel suite in an organized manner. <…> Currently, the aforementioned persons are avoiding meetings with the investigator to answer the investigation’s questions, and their actions demonstrate a well-planned provocation," the message says.
It is unclear what happened to the bottles, including whether one of them was sent to Germany, the ministry notes. The question is especially relevant since Pevchikh bought a similar water bottle at the Novosibirsk airport before boarding the plane for Omsk.
Probe
Within an inquiry launched by Russia into the incident with opposition figure Alexey Navalny, over 210 people have been questioned and over 60 forensic analyses have been initiated on 542 seized objects, the Russian Interior Ministry’s Transport Department for the Siberian Federal District informed.
"Within the inquiry, a vast set of proceedings and investigative activities has been carried out, during which over 210 people have been questioned and over 60 forensic analyses have been appointed on 542 seized objects," the message reads.
According to the experts, no toxic substances have been found in Navalny’s body, on his clothes, on objects seized from the hotel he was staying at and in the cafe at the Tomsk airport.
Russian opposition figure Alexey 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 22, Navalny was discharged from the 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. According to Germany, these findings were confirmed by laboratories in France and Sweden.