The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons confirmed on Tuesday that Russian opposition leader Alexei A. The substance that poisoned Navalny had “similar structural characteristics” for the Novichok family of very powerful nerve agents.
The findings of the world’s leading chemical weapons organization add weight to the findings of laboratories in Germany, France and Sweden, and increase the likelihood that Russia, which has used the same poison in at least one previous assassination attempt, will be accused. Punishment, potentially with targeted financial sanctions.
“These results are a matter of serious concern,” the organization said in a statement. “The use of chemical weapons by anyone under any circumstances,” is reprehensible and in stark contrast to the legal norms established by the international community. “
Mr Naval, Russia’s most prominent political opponent, fell ill on a flight from Siberia on August 20 and fell into a coma. Russian authorities initially prevented his family from taking him abroad for treatment, but he was eventually brought to Berlin, where he was treated at Charita Hospital. He was discharged on September 23 and vowed to return to Russia to continue his work after a period of rehabilitation in Germany.
German officials said they never doubted the findings of military scientists in Germany who found traces of Neuwichok in biological samples taken from Mr. Navalny, as well as plastic water bottles from his hotel that had been smuggled from Russia. Assistants.
But the organization’s findings on the prohibition of chemical weapons would add an authoritative and independent assessment that the Germans could use as ammunition in search of punishment, largely in the form of financial sanctions against Russian officials.
Thus, Germany will follow the playbook used in 2018, when the British government relied on a body of chemical weapons to confirm its conclusion that Russian operators had recruited former Russian military Sergei V. Novichok used poison in an attempt to kill Scripps. The intelligence officer who spied for Britain. In that case, the organisation’s findings helped reassure Britain’s allies and expel a group of Russian officials in the weeks following the poisoning.
German government spokesman Stefan Seibert said in a statement on Tuesday that “in the coming days” the European Union (EU) will discuss “next steps” with the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.
“The German government is renewing its call to explain what happened to Russia,” Mr Seibert said. “Any use of chemical weapons is a serious process and cannot be without consequences.”
Prohibition of Chemical Weapons The organization was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2013 for its efforts to eliminate the world’s stockpile of chemical weapons, but the world’s record as a watchdog for such weapons has become cloudy in recent years.
In 2017, an official of the organization fulfilled its obligations as part of the Chemical Weapons Convention for this trip to Moscow and destroyed the remaining declared shares of chemical weapons.
Less than six months later, according to the British government, a pair of Russian operators were on a British tour, armed with Novichok-class chemical weapons, secretly produced under the noses of weapons inspectors. Activists used it to poison Mr Scripps and his daughter, Yulia Scripps, in Salisbury, south England. Three other people were also poisoned in Salisbury, and one of them, Don Sturgess, died.
Two years later, it was used on Mr. Navalny.
Russian officials have denied involvement in either attack. On September 15, the head of Russia’s foreign intelligence service, Sergei Narishky, gave a rare news conference in which he said that all shares of Novichok had been destroyed in accordance with the Convention on Chemical Weapons.
“To say that there is production or stock of military-grade toxins on the territory of Russia is to dissolve the course,” Mr Narishkin said.
Although Western intelligence services say otherwise, Mr. Narishkin’s remarks, albeit inaccurate, were revealed – a rare acknowledgment that Russia had stockpiles of Novichok at least at one time. The nerve agent developed in the Soviet Union and Russia in the 1980s and 90s and was so highly classified that it was not even listed as a banned substance under the Chemical Weapons Convention before the Scripps attack.
Prior to Mr. Narishkin’s remarks, Russian officials denied that the Novichok program existed, although some Russian scientists involved talked about it in public.
Despite the Russian refusal, a small group of Westerners have known for decades about the Kremlin’s Novichok program, including where the substance is produced and stored, said Andrew Weber, a senior fellow at the Council on Strategic Risk.
Wester said Western officials had pressured their Russian counterparts on several occasions to stop the production of weapons, although for years the West had opposed the list of chemical weapons conventions of banned substances, including the Novichok class.
Mr Weber, who was assistant secretary of defense for nuclear, biological and chemical weapons programs during the Obama administration, said weapons were considered so dangerous that accepting them in public was considered a risk of proliferation.
Russia has never had a large stockpile of Novichok, but was able to produce small quantities on demand, he said. He added that even a small amount is enough to kill thousands of people.
It was only after Salisbury’s poisoning that Western officials publicly accused the Russians and successfully pushed for the addition of three forms of the Novichok nerve agent to the list of banned substances, although not all of them.
According to German officials, the use of nerve agents on Mr. Navalny is a novel by Novichok that was unknown to Western experts.
In an interview posted Monday on a popular Russian YouTube channel, Mr. Navalny struggled to explain to Novichok what it felt like to drink poison, saying it was nothing like he had never felt.
“Usually when you don’t feel well, you can evaluate yourself and find out what’s going on – my heart hurts, my stomach hurts, my legs hurt or I have a cold,” he said. He told interviewer Yuri Dud. “But in this case you don’t understand it.”
He said it’s like being kissed by a dementor, a monster sucking the haunted souls of the Harry Potter series.
He said, “It doesn’t hurt, but life escapes you.”
