Alexei Navalny was poisoned with Novichok, Germany says

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By Melissa Eddy

BERLIN — The German government said on Wednesday (2) that the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, currently under treatment in a German hospital, had been poisoned with a deadly nerve agent from the Novichok family and demanded an explanation from Moscow.

Novichok, a Soviet-era weapon invented for military use, was used against Sergei Skripal, a former Soviet spy, and his daughter in a 2018 attack in Salisbury, England, that the British government attributed to Russia’s military intelligence arm, the GRU.

Toxicology tests carried out by a German army laboratory revealed the “doubtless presence of a nerve agent from the Novichok group” in the system of Navalny, who was flown to Germany on Aug. 22 after he collapsed on a flight from Siberia to Moscow.

“The German government condemns this attack in the strongest possible terms,” Steffen Seibert, a spokesman for Chancellor Angela Merkel, said in a statement. “The Russian government is urgently requested to explain what happened.”

The Kremlin said it had not been not informed of Germany’s findings before they were announced, the Russian state news outlet Tass reported. Heiko Maas, the German foreign minister, said he would summon the Russian ambassador to inform him of the lab results.

“It is disturbing that Alexei Navalny was the victim of an attack with a chemical nerve agent in Russia,” Seibert said.

Also informed of the findings were Navalny’s wife, Yulia, who flew with him to Berlin, and the doctors who are treating him at the Charité hospital, where he remains in stable condition in a medically induced coma.

The United States stopped producing nerve agents in 1970, after the development of “third generation” nerve agents like sarin and VX, but Soviet scientists kept at it for two decades, developing a “fourth generation”, the Novichok group.

Developed for battlefield use against Western troops, Novichok has come to be associated with state-sponsored poisonings of those who fall out of favour with the Kremlin. At the time of the Skripal poisoning, experts said that the stockpile of Novichok was tightly guarded, and expressed doubts that the substance would be used by anyone other than a state-sponsored agent.

Exposure to Novichok agents leads to muscle spasms, secretion of fluid into the lungs and organ failure, chemical weapons experts say.

The case is expected to further strain ties between Berlin and Moscow that have been tense since Russia annexed Crimea in 2014. Merkel has said that Germany, which currently holds the European Union’s rotating presidency, will try to seek a joint European response to Navalny’s case.

In March 2018, Skripal and his daughter, Yulia Skripal, were found unconscious and twitching on a park bench in Salisbury and were later found to have Novichok in their systems. Both survived the attack.

Investigators believed that the Skripals fell ill after a liquid form of the nerve agent that was applied to the front door knob of Skripal’s home seeped through their skin.

Four months later, two British citizens were poisoned after they retrieved a discarded vial of the chemical from a trash can, and one of them later died. Two police officers also became ill as a result of exposure to the chemical.

The Skripal case set off a major diplomatic crisis between London and Moscow, with Britain and its allies expelling dozens of Russian diplomats and imposing punishing sanctions on Russia.

Navalny, the most persistent critic of President Vladimir Putin of Russia, fell ill on Aug. 20 after spending several days meeting with opposition candidates in Novosibirsk, Siberia’s largest city. He had been promoting a strategy aimed at drawing support from the dominant United Russia party at the local level before nationwide municipal elections on Sept. 13.

There had been some question whether his poisoning had been carried out by Russian agents or perhaps by freelancers hoping to curry favour with Putin. The confirmed presence of a closely guarded nerve agent appeared to settle that dispute, pointing directly to a state actor.

-New York Times

 

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