THE HAGUE, November 29. /TASS/. Russia is going to press for proper answers from France, Sweden, Britain and Germany regarding the case of blogger Alexey Navalny, Russia’s representative to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), Alexander Shulgin told the 26th conference of the organization’s member-countries.
He stressed that "there are traces of a provocation and of politicization of the whole affair."
"We will be pressing for answers from France, Sweden, Britain and Germany, and we will do everything in our powers to establish the truth concerning this murky affair," he said.
Shulgin stressed that the four countries in question had failed to provide answers to Russia’s questions, while the OPCW Technical Secretariat declined Moscow’s proposal for joint examination of Navalny’s biomaterials that remained at the disposal of the organization and in Russia.
Earlier, more than 50 countries, including the United States and Britain, issued a statement in the OPCW claiming that Russia bore the responsibility for using a toxic chemical against blogger Alexey Navalny and urging Russia to provide explanations regarding the situation in accordance with Chemical Weapons Convention liabilities.
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. On August 22, he was airlifted to Berlin for treatment.
On September 2, the German government claimed that the blogger had been affected by a toxic agent belonging to the Novichok family. Berlin claimed that laboratories in France and Sweden had confirmed these conclusions.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has repeatedly pointed out that no poisonous substances had been detected in Navalny’s system prior to his transfer to Berlin and stressed Moscow’s readiness for all-round cooperation with Germany.