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Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny was poisoned with a neurotoxic chemical from the Noviciok group, the German government announced on Wednesday, reports to CNN. Noviciok is a neurotoxin that has also been talked about in the case of the poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, in 2018, in Great Britain.
Aleksei Navalny is currently being treated at a hospital in Berlin after she lost consciousness last month while taking off from a plane from the Siberian city of Tomsk. Before boarding, the Russian opponent had had tea in an airport cafe.
German government spokesman Steffen Siebert says he is “astonished” that Aleksei Navalny was the victim of a neurotoxin attack in Russia. “The federal government condemns this attack in the strongest possible terms,” Siebert said. “We expect a full recovery from Aleksei Navalny,” the German official added.
German Government: Russia to explain!
The tests that revealed the presence of the novice in Aleksei Navalny’s body were carried out in a special laboratory of the German army, at the request of the Charite Hospital, where the Russian opponent is hospitalized.
The German authorities will inform the EU and NATO partners about this result of the analyzes, as well as the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.
The Russian ambassador to Germany will also be officially informed. “We ask the Russian government to explain this incident,” the German federal government said in a statement.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel is expected to make a statement on the issue Wednesday night.
Read also: Russia’s reaction after Berlin announced that Aleksei Navalny was poisoned with novicek
What is noviciok, the neurotoxin with which Aleksei Navalny and Sergei Skripal were poisoned
Noviciok is a chemical weapon developed by the Soviet Union and Russia between 1971 and 1993. The scientists who worked on the development of this agent assure that it has the highest lethal potential of all the arsenal of this type that exists, some variants even from five to three. eight times more poisonous than Agent VX.
Neurotoxin is used fatally in very small amounts. A Russian expert who worked on its production said in 2018, commenting on the Skripal case, that only Russia had it and could use it.
“The Kremlin, like all criminals, always denies it. That does not mean anything. It’s too much to believe a single word Putin said. So it doesn’t mean anything. Novicek it was invented and studied and, experimentally, many tons were produced. As a final product. Only in Russia. Nobody in the world knew. No one had ever had this chemical before. It is a neurotoxin, it blocks the nerve centers and then our functions, our movements … Starting with breathing, sight. The seizures begin, permanent seizures and no cure. It’s torture and just watching everything unfold in animals. It takes about a gram to kill, “said Vil Vilzaianov, a chemical weapons expert.
Sergei Skripal, a former Russian double spy, and his daughter survived the poisoning of a rookie in March 2018, but a British citizen who also came into contact with the substance died.
Another scientist who contributed to the development of this chemical weapon, Russian Vladimir Uglev, said that there is no antidote for the novicek. Between 1972 and 1988, Uglev worked on the development of the project. Novicek in the city Volsk from the Saratov region. At that time, Vladimir Uglev was a researcher at GOSNIIOKHT (a Soviet center for the study of organic chemistry).
Uglev says that the novicek produced during his lifetime consisted of a mixture of four nerve agents, each named after the year it was created: B-1976, C-1976, A-1972 and D-1980.
The neurotoxins A-1972 and D-1980 were developed by Pyotr Kirpicev, who led the program voltage of the Soviet Ministry of Defense, whereby the USSR would produce a replica of the American-origin chemical weapon VX.
Editor: Luana Păvălucă
