German Chancellor Angela Merkel called on the Russian authorities to investigate the alleged poisoning of Russian blogger Alexei Navalny without showing condemnation. This opinion was expressed on Thursday, September 3, by the vice-president of the Bundestag Wolfgang Kubiki in an interview with RT.
“On the part of the German Chancellor, I see no hasty condemnation of the Russian government. In the end, she also called for an investigation. This can only be demanded if this horrible assassination attempt has more than one potential customer, ”he said.
He stated that the reaction of the German government was justified.
“First, it is necessary to enable the Russian government to solve this crime. But I also expect that the factions of the German Bundestag will be provided with the information available to the German government as soon as possible, ”he added.
In turn, Merkel, during a press conference with Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Leuven, said that she still expects a reaction from the Russian side.
“Much depends on the reaction of the Russian government. I have nothing to add to yesterday’s words, “Bloomberg quotes her.
Earlier on the same day, President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko, at a meeting with Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, announced the interception of the conversation between Warsaw and Berlin that the statements of German Chancellor Angela Merkel about the poisoning of blogger Alexei Navalny were falsifications. He promised to hand over the recording of the conversation to the Russian side.
On September 2, the German authorities released a statement that a special laboratory of the German Armed Forces allegedly found in the samples of Navalny, who was in a coma in the German clinic Charite, “unequivocal evidence” of a chemical substance nerve-paralytic of the Novichok group. What kind of samples were examined, the statement does not specify, it is also unknown what exactly was found: the substance itself, its traces or the consequences of its exposure.
The German authorities announced their intention to inform the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), their partners in the EU and NATO, as well as the Russian ambassador in Berlin about these findings.
The Russian Foreign Ministry called Berlin’s statements about the alleged poisoning of a Russian as another information campaign against Russia, since they are not supported by facts.
Navalny felt unwell during the Tomsk-Moscow flight on 20 August. The plane urgently landed in Omsk and the patient was taken to the emergency hospital No. 1. According to the head physician of this hospital, the blogger was diagnosed with metabolic disorders. On August 22, Navalny was taken to the Charite clinic in Berlin for treatment.
The German clinic said that they found Navalny intoxication with a substance from the group of cholinesterase inhibitors.
In turn, the chief toxicologist of the Omsk region and the Siberian Federal District, Alexander Sabaev, said that cholinesterase inhibitors were not detected in the Omsk hospital during the blogger’s examination. Doctors of the hospital in Omsk expressed their readiness to provide the Charite clinic with samples of Navalny’s biomaterials.