WASHINGTON, October 6. /TASS/. The Russian Embassy in the United States described the US Department of State’s claims linked to the case of Russian blogger Alexey Navalny as ‘unfounded.’
On Tuesday, the United States and 44 other countries handed over to Russia questions about blogger Alexei Navalny’s case at the headquarters of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), the US Department of State’s press service said. The presentation of these questions was carried out in accordance with a procedure envisaged by the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), of which both the United States and Russia are members.
"We have taken note of yet another unfounded accusation of the US State Department related to the alleged use of chemical weapons by the Russian intelligence agencies," the embassy said in a Facebook post.
"The so-called ‘Navalny case’ from the very first hours went hand-in-hand with an aggressive propaganda campaign waged by Western and affiliated Russian media with the general thesis based on unfounded allegation of ‘poisoning’ of the blogger," the statement says.
The embassy reiterated Russia’s commitment to its obligations under the CWC.
"In 2017, our country eliminated all national stockpiles of chemical warfare agents, which was documented by the OPCW," the embassy said. "The United States, in turn, remains the only country which has not eliminated its significant arsenal of chemical weapons."
"We call on Washington to finalize the chemical demilitarization program and fulfill international obligations in the nearest terms, securing the world from the potential use of this type of arms," Russian diplomats said.
Navalny case
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. Later, 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 repeatedly emphasized that Russia was ready for comprehensive cooperation with Germany and pointed out that no poisonous substances had been detected in Navalny’s system prior to his transfer to Berlin.
Russian Foreign Ministry’s official spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, said in September that eight requests of the Russia’s Prosecutor General to the German law enforcement agencies were sent in 2020-2021, but went unanswered.
Navalny, wanted for repeatedly violating his probation over his suspended sentence in the Yves Rocher case, was detained upon his return from Germany at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport on January 17, 2021. On February 2, a Moscow court sentenced him to an actual prison term.