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Russia has accused Germany of blocking efforts to investigate the poison attack on Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny. “Berlin is delaying the investigation it asks of itself. By the way?” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Sakharova asked on Facebook on Sunday. Berlin did not respond to a request for legal assistance from the Russian prosecution on August 27. The Berlin authorities have confirmed receipt of the request.
“Dear Mr Maas, if the German government takes what you have said seriously, it should be interested in responding to a request from the Russian Prosecutor’s Office as soon as possible,” the spokeswoman said. “So far we are not sure whether Germany is not playing a double game,” he added.
Federal Chancellor Heiko Maas (SPD) had again asked the Kremlin to investigate the case and did not rule out sanctions. “If there are no contributions to the investigation from the Russian side in the coming days, we will have to discuss a response with our partners,” Maas told “Bild am Sonntag”. The crime against Navalny is such a serious violation of the international chemical weapons treaty that it cannot go without a notable reaction.
Very little evidence
The prominent Russian opposition politician Navalny has been treated at the Berlin Charité since August 22, after he collapsed two days earlier during a flight in Russia. The federal government announced Wednesday that Navalny had been poisoned “without question” with a chemical nerve agent from the so-called Novichok group. The poison was developed by Soviet scientists in the 1970s.
Calls for sanctions against Russia are getting stronger every day. EU member states also threaten punitive measures. But it is questionable whether this can ever be decided. In a statement on Navalny, the EU warned against restrictive measures against Moscow. However, it is conceivable that those responsible would be specifically sanctioned, for example their entry into the EU would be banned and accounts in Europe blocked.
There is already a precedent for such punitive measures in the event of a poison attack: in early 2019, the EU included four employees of the Russian military intelligence service GRU on its sanctions list. The motive was the attack on former Russian double agent Sergej Skripal, who was poisoned in March 2018 in Salisbury, UK, as was Navalny with the nerve agent Novichok.
“The difference with the Skripal case is that there was clear evidence at the time that the GRU agents were in Britain,” says Steven Blockmans of the Center for European Policy Studies in Brussels (Ceps). On the basis of British investigations, there was also “forensic evidence of the involvement of the Russian secret services”. Under EU law, mere “guesswork” is not enough to impose permanent penalties on people, says the lawyer. The fact that the poison used by Novichok was developed by the Soviet Army and is not freely available is not enough either.
Pressure on the economy
There would be the possibility of economic sanctions, which may be more politically motivated. After the downing of flight MH17 in the Ukraine conflict in 2014, the EU imposed a whole series of punitive measures against Russia: they are directed against state banks, the import and export of weapons and the oil and gas industry.
In its statement on Navalny, the EU did not “explicitly name economic sanctions, but neither did it explicitly rule them out,” says the EU diplomat. It reserves the right to take “appropriate measures” to pressure Russia. They could also be financial penalties.
Meanwhile, the Navalny case is not only fueling the debate about the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline between Russia and Germany in Germany. This has come under fire in the EU for years because it allows Moscow to no longer funnel gas through Ukraine and various Eastern European member states. As a result, they lose considerable transit fees.
Greens: “Former Chancellor Schröder has to decide”
After the Nawalny poisoning, Poland again asked for the project to be stopped. Federal Foreign Minister Heiko Maas (SPD) did not completely rule out that step over the weekend. However, he stressed that this will affect “more than 100 companies in twelve European countries.” And he added: “When we think about sanctions, they should be as selective as possible.” In any case, Belgian Blockman does not believe “that Germany will go that far.”
Meanwhile, politicians from the CDU and the Greens have called on former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder (SPD) to vacate his position at the Nord Stream 2 pipeline company. Green parliamentary group leader Katrin Göring-Eckardt told newspapers on Sunday from the Funke media group: “Former SPD Chancellor Schröder must now decide whether he is on the side of democracy and human rights.”
Saxon Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer turned against calls to halt construction of the Baltic Sea pipeline. “Nord Stream 2 must be built more,” the CDU politician said on Saturday. “We depend on each other, we need this cooperation.” CDU economics expert Friedrich Merz had called for a two-year construction freeze on Nord Stream 2.
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