Allegations of Russia Poisoning Navalny Lack Solid Proof, German Lawmaker Says

MOSCOW (Sputnik) – Accusations of Moscow’s involvement in the alleged poisoning of opposition figure Alexei Navalny need to be well-grounded, otherwise, they will resemble the 2018 Skripal case, which lacks evidence of a Russian role, Anton Friesen, a member of the German Bundestag’s Foreign Affairs Committee from the AfD party, said on Thursday.

Berlin on Wednesday claimed that a German military laboratory possessed undeniable proof of 44-year-old Navalny’s intoxication with a nerve agent from the Novichok group.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova subsequently noted that the German government’s claims of Navalny’s poisoning lack evidence, and added that it was perplexing why Berlin first addressed the EU, NATO and third parties, such as the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), in relation to the case, instead of contacting Russia directly.

On 20 August, Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny fell gravely ill during a domestic Russian flight. Following an emergency landing in the Siberian city of Omsk, he was taken to a local hospital and, according to regional doctors, he arrived just 17 minutes after landing.

For the next 44 hours, doctors waged an uninterrupted struggle for his life, as he went into a coma and was put on an artificial lung ventilator.

Immediately after Navalny fell ill, his spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh claimed that he might have been poisoned.

Upon conducting multiple tests, Russian medics established that no traces of poison had been found in his system, saying that Navalny’s condition was caused by an abrupt drop of glucose in his blood due to a metabolic imbalance.

On 22 August, Navalny was flown to Berlin for further treatment. German doctors claimed that they had found traces of a substance from the group of cholinesterase inhibitors in his body, which the Russian doctors denied, referring to his test results.

Sourse: sputniknews.com