The German ambassador to Russia has been summoned to the Russian Foreign Ministry for clarification on Berlin’s claim that dissident Alexei Navalny was poisoned.
“We are waiting for the German ambassador,” Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson, Maria Zakharova says.
According to Zakharova, Germany have not presented sufficient evidence to substantiate the claim that Navalny was poisoned with the Soviet-developed nerve agent Novichok.
“It’s time to show the cards because it’s obvious to everyone that Berlin is bluffing,” Zakharova says in a statement posted on her Facebook page.
After Germany declared that Russian dissident Alexei Navalny had been poisoned in a nerve agent attack, conspiracy theories began to spread that called the results of the German military’s toxicology tests into question.
More than 40 experts work at the Bundeswehr’s Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology, where a special laboratory analysed blood, urine and clothing samples from Navalny, who is being treated at a Berlin hospital.
The institute, situated on a secure military site in Munich, is one of the world’s leading bodies for chemical weapons research and is recognised as one of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons’ (OPCW) designated laboratories.
Since the Berlin government announced the discovery of “unequivocal” evidence of a Novichok substance used against Navalny last week, rumours and disinformation abound.
Though the temptation to debunk such unfounded claims may be strong, Berlin is unlikely to fully reveal its testing process, including the secret methods of military scientists, to the Russian side.
Germany is said to have a stock of Novichok, thanks to a Russian scientist who reportedly brought the samples of the Soviet-developed nerve agent to the country in the ’90s, after the fall of the Soviet Union.
“Western agencies of course have Novichok samples in order to be able to identify the various forms from this group,” said Patrick Sensburg, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU), on the sidelines of a parliamentary intelligence committee meeting.
But the ball for investigating Navalny’s poisoning is now mainly in Russia’s court.
The prominent critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin and anti-corruption campaigner fell ill on Aug. 20 while on a domestic flight from the Siberian city of Tomsk.
Navalny’s supporters suspect that he drank a tea laced with poison while at the airport there.
He was initially treated at a hospital in Siberia.
“All evidence, witnesses, traces, etc are of course at the place where the crime was committed, so probably somewhere in Siberia,” a German Foreign Office spokesman said.
“Due to the two-day medical treatment on site after the crime, it can also be assumed that everything necessary to investigate is under the control of the Russian authorities in Russia,” he added.
