MOSCOW, September 25. /TASS/. There are no grounds to put the situation around Russian opposition blogger Alexey Navalny for discussion at the United Nations Security Council, Russia’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations Vassily Nebenzia said on Friday.
He said in an interview with RTVI he knew nothing about plans to discuss the Navanly case at the United Nations Security Council.
"And there are no grounds for that. This is not the topic on the agenda of any United Nations body," he said.
According to the Russian diplomat, the reaction of other countries to Moscow’s inquiries to Germany on the Navalny case hints that "there is something more about it than a mere striving to find the truth." "Naturally, it is obvious that they just want to punish Russia somehow over this matter. [Russian Foreign Minister Sergey] Lavrov said not long ago that if this case had not existed they would have invented anything else. By the way, I had a similar feeling before the whole thing started: it’s been a long time nothing bad is said about Russia, no measures taken. Regrettably, it was a prophetic feeling," Nebenzia added.
The issue of the Navalny case impacts on relations between Russia and other countries is not addressed by the United Nations, Nebenzia said .
"The topic you are talking about is not addressed by the United Nations. It is not a topic for discussion at the United Nations, after all," he said.
According to the Russian diplomat, the incident with Navalny was touched upon at the United Nations only once during a meeting on the problem of chemical weapons in Syria. "The colleagues touched upon the Navalny situation only then. I told them back then that the Srkipal saga had somewhat died down, had fallen into oblivion. In the meantime, those 200 questions we asked on that case have not been answered so far," he said.
Navalny was rushed to a local hospital in the Siberian city of Omsk on August 20 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, Berlin claimed that having examined Navalny’s test samples, German government toxicologists had come to the conclusion that the blogger had been affected by a toxic agent belonging to the Novichok family.
Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Russia was ready for comprehensive cooperation with Germany. He pointed out that no poisonous substances had been detected in Navalny’s system prior to his transfer to Berlin. Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that the German Foreign Office had not provided the Russian ambassador with any proof of its version of the incident.
Speaker of the Russian State Duma lower parliament house Vyacheslav Volodin said in an interview with the Rossiya-24 television channel that the situation with Navalny was a provocation of Western nations geared to contain Russia.
Navalny was rushed to a local hospital in the Siberian city of Omsk on August 20 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, Berlin claimed that having examined Navalny’s test samples, German government toxicologists had come to the conclusion that the blogger had been affected by a toxic agent belonging to the Novichok family.
Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Russia was ready for comprehensive cooperation with Germany. He pointed out that no poisonous substances had been detected in Navalny’s system prior to his transfer to Berlin. Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that the German Foreign Office had not provided the Russian ambassador with any proof of its version of the incident.
Speaker of the Russian State Duma lower parliament house Vyacheslav Volodin said in an interview with the Rossiya-24 television channel that the situation with Navalny was a provocation of Western nations geared to contain Russia.