Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Loewen commented on the calls of a number of politicians to stop the construction of the Nord Stream 2 (SP-2) gas pipeline due to the situation with the “poisoning” of blogger Alexei Navalny.
He noted that Sweden had previously issued a permit for the construction of the gas pipeline, and will not violate international law.
“We have already made all decisions regarding the issuance of a permit for (construction) of Nord Stream 2. It is very important for us that international law is respected, ”Leuven said in an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, published on Saturday 5 September.
The politician refused to “turn into a discussion” the discussion of the introduction of new sanctions in Brussels because of the situation with the Russian blogger, but stressed that Moscow should bring those responsible to justice.
Navalny got sick during the Tomsk-Moscow flight on 20 August. The plane urgently landed in Omsk, and the blogger was taken to the emergency hospital number 1. He was diagnosed with metabolic disorders. Two days later, Navalny was taken to the German clinic “Charite”, where he was “found” intoxication with a substance from the group of cholinesterase inhibitors. In turn, their presence in the blogger’s body was denied by the Chief Toxicologist of the Omsk Region and the Siberian Federal District, Alexander Sabaev, and the doctors of the Omsk hospital expressed their readiness to provide the blogger’s test results.
On September 2, the German government, relying on data from a special laboratory of the Bundeswehr, announced that in the samples of Navalny, who was in a coma, there was “unequivocal evidence” of a nerve agent of the Novichok group. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in turn, argued that Navalny was “deliberately poisoned.” No evidence and facts were attached either to the statement of the FRG authorities or to the statements of its chancellor, as well as all official inquiries from Berlin, including the General Prosecutor’s Office of Russia and doctors, remained unanswered.
The Russian Foreign Ministry called such statements by the FRG leadership another information campaign against Russia, since they are not backed up by facts. The ministry also called on the German side to hand over to Moscow the data on the basis of which conclusions were drawn about Navalny’s “poisoning”.
On the same day, the head of the opposition German party Soyuz-90 / Greens, Katrin Goering-Eckardt, said that the political force demands from the German government to stop the implementation of the Nord Stream 2 project due to new data on the incident with Navalny. A similar appeal was made a few days later by Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba.
The Kremlin said that they see no reason for sanctions against Russia and Nord Stream 2 due to the situation with the blogger.