THE HAGUE, September 10. /TASS/. Statements made by German officials regarding the handover of materials on Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny’s alleged poisoning to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) are untrue, Russia’s mission to the OPCW said in a message published on Thursday.
"The statements made by German officials <…> are untrue, they do not correspond to reality," the document says. "The OPCW Technical Secretariat has confirmed to us that Germany did not hand over anything to the organization neither on September 9 nor on September 10. The only thing that came from Berlin was the letter by State Secretary of the Federal Foreign Office Miguel Berger dated September 3." "We are ready to cooperate with the organization using all convention mechanisms in its possession to find out what happened through exchanging information and holding consultations as stipulated by the [Chemical Weapons] Convention," the mission informed.
Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny was rushed to a local hospital in the Siberian city of Omsk on August 20 after collapsing on the Tomsk-Moscow flight. He fell into a coma and was hooked up to a ventilator in the intensive care unit. On August 22, he was airlifted to the Charite hospital in Berlin. Last week, the German government claimed that Navalny had been poisoned with a Novichok-type toxic agent.
Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said later that Russia is ready for comprehensive cooperation with Germany. He noted that before Navalny was transferred to Berlin, no toxic substances had been found in his system.
On September 7, the German clinic informed that Navalny had been brought out of a coma, and that he is gradually being taken off artificial ventilation.