MOSCOW, July 19. /TASS/. Russian lawmakers want explanations from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) about time-related inconsistencies in its draft report concerning the alleged poisoning of Alexei Navalny, according to a letter sent by the Russian State Duma (lower parliament house) commission for the investigation of foreign interference into Russia’s domestic affairs to OPCW Director General Fernando Arias and German parliament speaker Wolfgang Schaeuble.
"We are seriously concerned about the situation and want clear explanations from the OPCW Technical Secretariat because such a blatant fact was described by the OPCW Executive Council as a mere ‘technical typo,’ which looks unconvincing for us," reads the letter signed by the commission’s head, Vasily Piskarev. The letter was posted on the commission’s Telegram channel.
The Russian lawmakers also want the OPCW to respond to Russia’s inquiries to share "at least the chemical formula of the substance allegedly identified by the OPCW-designated laboratories in Navalny’s biomaterials that were taken outside Russia."
In another letter to the German parliament speaker, the Russian lawmakers expressed concern over the situation and hope that German colleagues "will take resolute steps to push Germany’s executive bodies towards cooperation with Russian law enforcement agencies to find the truth about this case." They invited the German side to pool efforts to find solutions that would help preserve the Russian-German relations and "the existing basis for cooperation" between Russia and Germany.
Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said earlier that the OPCW draft report had revealed fatal inconsistencies for the version of events claiming Navalny was poisoned, which the Technical Secretariat was unable to explain to Moscow. The document indicated that the OPCW Technical Secretariat had deployed a mission for technical assistance related to the suspected "poisoning of a Russian citizen" at Germany’s request on August 20, 2020 - the day of the Navalny incident. The diplomat emphasized that the drafting of Germany’s request to the OPCW had to take a considerable amount of time, as that could not have happened immediately.
On Wednesday, German Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Rainer Breul said that time discrepancies in the OPCW draft report in the part related to the alleged poisoning of blogger Alexey Navalny were due to a mistake in the date, which was corrected in the second version.
Alexey Navalny was rushed to a local hospital in the Siberian city of Omsk on August 20, 2020, 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, the German government claimed that the blogger had been affected by a toxic agent belonging to the Novichok family. Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov pointed out that no poisonous substances had been detected in Navalny’s system prior to his transfer to Berlin.