Russia on Wednesday issued a strong protest to Germany over the alleged poisoning of anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny, denouncing what it said were baseless claims and warning of a major risk to diplomatic ties.
The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that it had summoned German Ambassador to Russia Geza Andreas von Geyr, and protested “unfounded accusations and ultimatums against Russia,” and the “obvious use of [Navalny’s] situation by Berlin as a pretext to discredit our country.”
It again urged Berlin to respond to a request from Russian prosecutors for the evidence, including medical data, that led Germany to declare that Navalny, one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest critics, had been poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok.
Photo: Reuters
Failure to provide the materials would be seen as a “gross hostile provocation ... fraught with consequences for Russian-German relations, as well as a serious complication of the international situation,” the ministry said.
Navalny, a 44-year-old lawyer and anti-corruption campaigner, suddenly fell seriously ill last month as he took a flight in Siberia and was evacuated to Berlin for treatment.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday said that “there is a substantial chance that this actually came from senior Russian officials.”
Pompeo said that the US would also investigate the poisoning and could take its own action.
“It’s something that we’ll take a look at, we’ll evaluate, and we’ll make sure we do our part, to do whatever we can to reduce the risk that things like this happen again,” he said in a radio interview.
Moscow yesterday went on a diplomatic offensive over the case, hitting back at Western accusations and talk of new sanctions.
As well as summoning the ambassador, the ministry issued a response to a G7 statement calling for those behind the suspected poisoning to be quickly found and prosecuted.
The ministry denounced an “ongoing massive disinformation campaign” aimed at “mobilizing sanctions sentiment” that had nothing to do with Navalny’s health or “finding out the genuine reasons for his hospitalization.”
“Unfounded attacks on Russia are continuing,” the ministry said, with a “whipping up of hysteria” around the case.
Germany last week said that there was unequivocal evidence that Navalny had been poisoned with Novichok, the same substance used in the 2018 attack on a former Russian double agent and his daughter in the UK.
Navalny’s associates say the use of Novichok, a military-grade nerve agent, shows that only the Russian state could be responsible, but the Kremlin denies any involvement.
Russian officials have accused Germany of being slow to share the findings of its investigation.
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