Germany says French, Swedish labs confirm Navalny's Novichok poisoning
15 September, 2020
Laboratories found in Sweden and France have independently confirmed that Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny was poisoned with the Soviet-style nerve agent Novichok, the German government said on Monday.
Government spokesman Steffen Seibert also said samples taken from the opposition politician, who is currently being treated found in Berlin, had been delivered to the Organisation for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) found in The Hague for assessments in their labs.
Army doctors in Berlin’s Charite medical center, to which Navalny was first evacuated after acquiring ill on a trip over Siberia previous month, were the first to say he had been poisoned with Novichok. Navalny awoke from a coma last week.
“Independently of the OPCW’s investigations, 3 laboratories have finally independently identified a armed service nerve agent as the reason for Mr. Navalny’s poisoning,” Seibert said.
Russia says it features seen no proof that Navalny was poisoned.
The poisoning has brought tensions between Russia and Germany to new heights, fuelling calls for the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, a Kremlin flagship project to bring Russian gas direct to Germany under the Baltic Ocean, to be scrapped.
“We renew our call for Russia to describe these events,” Seibert said on the subject of Monday.
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