THE HAGUE, May 15. /TASS/. The alleged "poisoning" of Sergey and Yulia Skripal as well as Alexey Navalny were provocations by Western secret services, Kirill Lysogorsky, Russia Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade, who is leading the Russian delegation at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons’ 5th Review Conference, said in a statement on Monday.

"Since 2018, the 'collective West' has conducted a large-scale anti-Russian disinformation campaign on the OPCW platform with unsubstantiated accusations against Russia of the alleged 'poisoning' of the Skripals (father and daughter), as well as Navalny," the document uploaded to the organization's website says. "We view these cases solely as provocations by Western secret services aimed at portraying Russia as violating the Chemical Weapons Convention."

Lysogorsky said some countries "have been making groundless accusations against Russia, and demanding an admission of guilt and repentance." At the same time, they still have not answered Russia’s questions and "persistently refuse to cooperate with Russia’s competent authorities in establishing the true circumstances of the incidents involving the Skripals and the Russian blogger," the chief Russian delegate said.

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. 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. Russian presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov pointed out that no poisonous substances had been detected in Navalny's system prior to his transfer to Berlin.

If the British version of the incident involving the Skripals is to be believed, on March 4, 2018, former GRU Colonel Sergey Skripal, convicted in Russia of espionage for Britain, and his daughter Yulia were exposed to the Novichok nerve agent in Salisbury. London later claimed that the substance had allegedly been developed in Russia and accused Moscow of being involved in the incident. Russia categorically rejected all speculation in this regard. Experts at Britain’s laboratory in Porton Down have not been able to establish the origin of the substance with which the Skripals were allegedly poisoned.