MOSCOW, September 3. /TASS/. Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Wednesday the West’s reaction to the incident with Russian opposition blogger Alexei Navalny looks as though it was prepared well in advance.
"They rushed to microphones immediately as though they rehearsed it in advance, as though this information campaign was prepared in advance and all that was left to do was to press the button to release these carbon-copy statements all over the world," she said in an interview with the Vecher (Evening) With Vladimir Solovyov program on the Rossiya-1 television channel.
"It looks like some measures we have been threatened with were prepared well in advance. Maybe, it is time to justify it somehow and begin implement," she added.
However, in her words, the German side has not yet given any information on that matter to the Russian ambassador in Berlin.
Navalny felt sick on August 20 while flying from Tomsk to Moscow and the plane made an emergency landing in Omsk. The man was taken to hospital in a state of coma and was connected to a ling ventilator. He was airlifted to the Berlin-based Charite clinic in the morning on August 22. Its doctors said that indicators of poisoning had been found in his body. According to the doctors, the symptoms of poisoning have gradually abated.
On Wednesday, the German government said that German military toxicologists had found that Navalny had been exposed to a nerve agent of the Novichok family. Berlin called on Moscow to clarify the circumstances of the incident and promised to inform the Russian ambassador about the results of Navalny’s samples tests. The German Cabinet’s spokesperson Steffen Seibert said that Germany will notify the European Union, NATO and the OPCW of the latest information on Navalny case and will "discuss an appropriate joint response with the partners in the light of the Russian response." However, he did not elaborate on what steps could be taken.