Moscow | Russian diplomacy blasted Wednesday the “unacceptable” accusations from Paris and Berlin, which denounced Russia’s “involvement and responsibility” in the poisoning of Russian opponent Alexeï Navalny and threatened Moscow with sanctions.
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“Instead of duly cooperating with the Russian Federation in order to clarify the circumstances of what happened with this blogger, the German and French governments have moved on to threats and blackmail attempts against us,” said Russian diplomacy in a statement.
The German and French Foreign Ministers, Heiko Maas and Jean-Yves Le Drian, denounced in a joint statement Wednesday a “terrible assassination attempt” of Alexeï Navalny, fierce critic of the Kremlin and anti-corruption blogger, assuring see “no other plausible explanation” for his poisoning “than Russian responsibility and involvement.”
A “declaration unacceptable by its content and its tone”, reacted Russian diplomacy in the press release, accusing Paris and Berlin of placing themselves “at the head of an anti-Russian coalition” which is being formed according to Moscow in within the European Union.
“The + business as usual + with Paris and Berlin, we no longer consider it possible”, she warned.
Mr Navalny, 44, fell seriously ill on August 20 on a plane in Siberia.
After being treated for a few days in a Siberian hospital, he was transferred to a hospital in Berlin and continues to recover in the German capital.
According to three European laboratories, whose findings were confirmed by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), Alexei Navalny was poisoned by a nerve agent from the Novichok group, a substance designed by Soviet specialists for military purposes. .
The Russian opponent directly accused Vladimir Poutine of being behind his poisoning, an accusation refuted by Moscow which considers it “unacceptable”.