Navalnyi poisoned, Germany accuses: ‘Novichok’s neurotoxin was used’

The tests carried out in Germany gave rise to an “unequivocal evidence”: the Russian opponent Alexei Navalny, hospitalized in a coma in Berlin, “was poisoned with a Novichok-type nerve agent.” The same man who nearly killed former spy Serghej Skripal and his daughter Jiulija in Salisbury, England, in March 2018.

“The Russian government is called upon to urgently clarify,” he wrote in a statement. Steffen seibert, the Chancellor’s spokesman Angela Merkel. “The federal government will inform its partners in the EU and NATO on the results of the investigation. We will discuss an appropriate joint response in light of the Russian response.” And the secretary general of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, asks Moscow for a “complete and transparent” investigation. The Farnesina speaks of “discomfort and indignation”, but the Kremlin reveals, through the mouth of the spokesman Dmitrij Peskov, that it “has not had knowledge” of the conclusions of the German authorities.

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The West has already imposed sanctions on Russia since the annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula six years ago. And after the Skripal case, the United States and the EU countries expelled several Russian diplomats and boycotted the World Cup in Moscow 2012. Another confrontation could further undermine relations and the economy of the Federation.

NavalnyThe 44-year-old anti-corruption blogger and one of the best-known faces of the so-called “non-systemic opposition”, not represented in parliament, felt bad last month on a flight from the Siberian city of Tomsk to Moscow. The plane had made an emergency landing where the man had received the first treatment before being transferred to Germany.

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Novichok is a group of lethal silver nerves developed in a Soviet laboratory in the 1970s and 1980s. German doctors’ conclusion, says Russian intelligence and security expert Mark galeotti, “is not necessarily proof that the Kremlin is behind the attack. Unfortunately, for people whose wealth and power are inversely proportional to their scruples, almost anything is accessible. But it certainly excludes everyone else except the majority. rich and powerful: not a local FSB agent (ex KGB, ed) or a mayor would have had such a nerve agent. “

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The journey of Skripal, the spy of the sweet life betrayed by the poison of Moscow

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Finally, Galeotti recalls that it has already happened that someone “close enough to Putin”, someone in his magic circle or considered “necessary so that the system” cannot be held responsible, has committed a crime for which Russia has not found responsible.