President Donald Trump has said that the United States should take Russia’s opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s poisoning “very seriously,” but that his administration has not yet seen any evidence.
“I think we have to take this very seriously if the matter is serious,” he said before speaking at length about his diplomatic efforts in North Korea and nuclear non-proliferation in Russia. “I do not know exactly what happened. It’s tragic. It’s terrible, it shouldn’t happen. We don’t have any evidence yet, but I’ll take a look.
“It’s interesting that everyone always mentions Russia … but I think at the moment China is a nation that you should talk about even more than Russia.”
This week, German Chancellor Angela Merkel revealed that military laboratory tests had “clarified” that the Kremlin critic had been poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok and that the case had been described as an “assassination attempt”.
On Friday, NATO called the attack “horrific” and called for justice. “Time and again we have seen critics [Vladimir Putin] The regime attacked and threatened. Some have been killed, “said spokeswoman Pierce Cazlette.
Russia has not yet opened a criminal investigation and said there was no evidence of a crime. On Friday he continued to offer alternative theories as to why he fell ill two weeks ago due to torture, dieting or an “easy lack of breakfast”.
Trump did not take a tougher stance than the State Department, which on Friday expressed serious concern about the discovery that Navalny had been poisoned.
At a meeting in Washington on Friday, Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Bigen told Russian Ambassador Anatoly Antonov that Moscow’s use of the chemical weapon would be a clear violation of its obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention.
“Deputy Secretary-General urges Russia to fully cooperate with the international community in its investigation into the attack,” the department’s spokesman Morgan Ortagas said in a statement.
Naval is one of President Vladimir Putin’s most prominent and leading opponents, and the German announcement this week that he had been poisoned by a nerve agent has raised the possibility of further Western sanctions against Moscow.
Reuters contributed to this report
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