Blogger Alexei Navalny said that the German prosecutor’s office interrogated him all day at the request of the Russian authorities.
“I was under interrogation all day. The German prosecutor’s office interrogated me at the request of the Russian authorities”, – Navalny wrote on Twitter.
On August 20, it became known that the plane on which Navalny flew from Tomsk to Moscow, urgently landed in Omsk due to the fact that he became ill during the flight. He was taken to the emergency hospital No. 1, and the regional Ministry of Health confirmed that the patient was in intensive care.
The main working diagnosis made by Russian doctors to Navalny is a violation of carbohydrate balance and metabolism. On 21 August, doctors allowed the patient to be transferred to Germany for treatment. On September 7, doctors from the Berlin clinic Charite reported that Navalny’s condition improved, he was taken out of a coma.
Currently, the Russian has been discharged from the hospital, where he is undergoing rehabilitation, during which he managed to talk to German Chancellor Angela Merkel on September 28.
After Navalny was admitted for treatment, the FRG government announced, citing military doctors, that he was allegedly poisoned with a substance from the Novichok group of toxic warfare agents. The German Cabinet said that these conclusions of German experts were confirmed by laboratories in Sweden and France, but did not give the names of the laboratories.
The OPCW investigation into the situation also concluded that the arguments presented by Western countries on the alleged “poisoning” can be considered evidential.
At the same time, international experts considered that Navalny’s body could interact with a substance similar to Novichok, which is not on the lists of banned chemicals.
After that, the foreign ministers of France and Germany announced in a joint communiqué that they would send the European Union a proposal on restrictive measures against Russia.
The Kremlin, commenting on the situation, said that Berlin, without informing Moscow about the findings, delays the provision of verifiable evidence. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova also stressed that Moscow will not be able to maintain its former relations with Paris and Berlin after the “communiqué” unacceptable in content and tone after the OPCW’s conclusions.
On October 15, the EU imposed sanctions against six Russian officials, as well as the state research institute of organic chemistry and technology. Justifying the restrictions, the German Foreign Ministry stated that it considers the officials who have come under the restrictions as “potentially responsible” for the situation with Navalny.
Official Moscow has promised to respond to the “deliberate unfriendly steps” of Brussels in a mirror image.