Russia censured Germany’s Government for refusal to share with Moscow the details of its medical treatment of a Russian opposition figure who has allegedly been poisoned and Berlin’s referral of the case to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).
“Sorry, this is just some real evasion, to put it mildly,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said during an interview with the local Rossiya-1 broadcaster on Monday. “But given the resonance and the sensitivity of the issue that we are all observing now, to be honest, I would like to pick up a stronger expression, because this is impossible.”
The remarks came after statements by German Foreign Minister Heiko Mass that OPCW experts had taken samples of Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny at Berlin’s Charite Hospital and that Moscow, as a member of the organization, could forward its requests regarding his case to The Hague-based agency.
Also on Monday, German government spokesman Steffen Seibert said Germany and the OPCW had advanced in joint work on the alleged poisoning case and “received the undeniable results of the special laboratory of the Bundeswehr (the German military).”
“We renew our call for Russia to explain these events,” Seibert added.
Zakharova said, “If there are serious facts, and they tell us these are real facts, and there is a request from the respective law enforcement agencies, then what could be more common, simple, true, honest, and right than to just hand them over to the Russian side?”
“Unfortunately, the chain of these strange things is not going to break,” she said.
Navalny was taken to a local hospital in the Siberian city of Omsk on August 20 after collapsing on a domestic flight. He was airlifted to Germany on August 22.
On September 2, the German government claimed that Navalny had been poisoned with a Novichok-family toxic agent. Berlin further claimed on Monday that three EU laboratories, including those in France and Sweden, had confirmed its test results for the Russian blogger.
Russia has said that tests on Navalny’s blood samples during his stay at the hospital in Omsk were negative, and that Germany should provide the details of its own tests on the opposition figure.
France, Germany urge Russian cooperation
Meanwhile, Germany and France also called on Russia on Monday to cooperate and probe the case after the laboratories in France and Sweden allegedly confirmed that he had been poisoned with a nerve agent.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, however, accused the West of using the incident as a pretext to impose additional sanctions on Moscow.
French President Emmanuel Macron’s office also declared in a statement after holding a phone conversation with his Russian counterpart, President Vladimir Putin, that Moscow had to provide explanation.
“The president expressed his deep concern over the criminal act perpetrated against Alexei Navalany and the imperative that all light be shed, without delay, on the circumstances and responsibilities of this attempted assassination,” Macron’s office said, referring to the French president.
The Kremlin issued its own readout of the phone call, saying that Putin told Macron that it was “inappropriate” to make groundless accusations against Russia in the case and that Moscow wanted Berlin to hand over the medical test results taken from the opposition figure.
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