German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas told the dpa agency that he considers the “investigation” of Spiegel journalists and other media outlets of the incident with blogger Alexei Navalny, whose findings have already been rejected in Moscow, confirmation of what the German authorities already know, but there are no new planned consequences in connection with the investigation data.
According to Maas, the results are “neither new nor unexpected”, the European Union has imposed punitive measures “against those politically responsible for a serious violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention”.
“The fact that now it has been once again refined and supported in a journalistic way, we regard as confirmation. However, on this basis, there will be no new consequences”, – the agency quoted Maas as saying.
Last week, Navalny, in sync with the American TV channel CNN, the German magazine Spiegel and the Bellingcat portal, which is known for anti-Russian conspiracy articles, published an article claiming that he knew the names of eight “FSB officers” who, according to him, repeatedly tried to poison him, but to no avail. According to Navalny, “FSB officers” traveled for the oppositionist in Russian regions, including allegedly both to Novosibirsk and Tomsk, which he did not know about before. At the same time, there is no evidence that these people committed any specific actions that led to the poisoning.
The authors of the “poisoning investigation” are Bellingcat employees. This resource has repeatedly published anti-Russian materials, in particular, on the case of the crash of the Malaysian flight MH17 in the Donbass and the “Skripal case”, the statements of which were denied by Russian officials.