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Russia has rejected accusations that Moscow was guilty of poisoning opposition leader Alexey Navalny, saying it saw no reason to impose sanctions against him in the case.
The Kremlin’s denial came on Thursday, as Western leaders and organizations stepped up their calls for answers, a day after German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that Navalny had been poisoned with a Soviet-style Novichok nerve agent in an attempt to assassinate him.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow rejected any suggestion that Russia was responsible and warned other countries not to rush to conclusions.
He said there was no reason to discuss measures against Moscow after Merkel said that Germany would consult its NATO allies on how to respond to the poisoning.
In the meantime, the world chemical weapons agency Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said on Thursday tPoisoning any individual with a toxic nerve agent would be considered use of a prohibited chemical weapon.
Novichok was banned this year by the OPWC.
“Any poisoning of an individual through the use of a nerve agent is considered a use of chemical weapons. Such an allegation is of great concern,” the OPCW said.
The Charite hospital in Berlin, where Navalny is in intensive care, has reported “some improvement” in his condition, but he remains in a medically induced coma and on a ventilator.
In a statement on Wednesday, Merkel spokesman Steffen Seibert said tests by a special German military laboratory had shown “evidence without question of a chemical nerve agent from the Novichok group” as it described Navalny as ” victim of a chemical nerve attack “. agent in Russia “.
Merkel later told a press conference: “This is disturbing information about the attempted murder by poisoning against a leading figure in the Russian opposition.”
German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas urged Moscow to investigate the poisoning and said the Russian ambassador had been summoned to explain the evidence.
“This makes it even more urgent that those responsible in Russia be identified and held accountable,” Maas told reporters. “We condemn this attack in the strongest terms.”
Novichok, a military grade nerve agent, was used to poison ex-Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the UK.
‘European response’
Navalny, 44, a politician and anti-corruption crusader who is one of the fiercest critics of Russian President Vladimir Putin, fell ill on a flight back to Moscow from Siberia on August 20 and was transferred to a hospital in the Siberian city. from Omsk after the plane. made an emergency landing.
He was later taken to Charite Hospital, where doctors said last week that there were indications that he had been poisoned.
Russian doctors who treated Navalny in Siberia have repeatedly challenged the German hospital’s finding, saying they ruled out poisoning as a diagnosis and that his tests for poisonous substances came back negative.
Aleksandra Stoyanovich-Godfroid of Al Jazeera, reporting from Moscow, said Russia’s response so far was “cautious and restrained.”
“Russian doctors discharged Navalny with a diagnosis of ‘metabolic disorder’. Two laboratories in Russia found nothing suspicious and a previous investigation did not find anything that led to a dirty act,” he said.
“On the other hand, the opposition is saying: ‘We knew [it was Novichok] – all the symptoms are there ‘”.
Novichok is a cholinesterase inhibitor, which is part of the class of substances that the Charite doctors initially identified in Navalny.
Navalny’s allies said the identification of the poison used against him by the German government suggests that the Russian state had been behind the attack.
“Just the state [FSB, GRU] you can use Novichok. This is beyond any reasonable doubt, “said Ivan Zhdanov, director of the Navalny Anti-Corruption Foundation, on Twitter, referring to the internal security services of the FSB and military intelligence GRU.
In the meantime, Norbert Roettgen, head of Germany’s parliamentary foreign affairs committee, told Deutschlandfunk radio on Thursday that “there must be a European response ” when asked if work on the NordStream 2 pipeline from Russia to Germany should be stopped in the wake of the Navalny poisoning.
“We must follow a tough policy, we must respond with the only language [Russian President Vladimir] Putin understands: that’s what gas sales are, “said Roettgen, a member of Merkel’s ruling conservatives.
