While the statement notes the improvement in Navalny’s health, it does not address the long-term prospects of anti-corruption fighter and best known opponent of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Doctors have previously warned that while Navalny is recovering, long-term health problems from poisoning cannot be ruled out.
The Kremlin has outraged calls by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other leaders to answer questions about the poisoning, denying any official involvement.
In Novosibirsk, which Navalny visited before falling ill, the head of his regional headquarters, Sergei Boyko, got a seat on the city council. According to preliminary reports, United Russia, the main Kremlin party, which Navalny called “the party of crooks and thieves”, has lost its majority on the council. Another Navalny representative, Ksenia Fadeeva, got a seat on the city council in Tomsk, a city he left on a flight with which he fell ill.
The German government said lab tests in France and Sweden confirmed the German military laboratory’s findings that Navalny was poisoned by Novichok, an agent of the same Soviet-era class that Britain said was used against former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury. … , England, in 2018.
German government spokesman Steffen Seibert said the Hague-based Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons is also making arrangements to test samples from Navalny at designated laboratories.
He said Germany has asked France and Sweden to independently study the results. German officials said laboratories in both countries, as well as the OPCW, had taken new samples from Navalny.
“As part of a non-OPCW research effort that is still ongoing, the three laboratories, meanwhile, independently provided evidence that Mr Navalny’s poisoning was caused by a Novichok nerve agent,” Seibert said.
“We once again call on Russia to make a statement about the incident,” he added. “We are closely consulting our European partners on possible next steps.”
Seibert did not identify the French and Swedish laboratories. But the head of the Swedish Defense Research Agency Asa Scott told the Swedish news agency TT: “We can confirm that we are seeing the same results as the German laboratory, so there is no doubt that these substances are involved.”
According to Macron’s office, French President Emmanuel Macron expressed “deep concern about the criminal act” directed against Navalny during a telephone conversation with Putin on Monday.
He confirmed that France has reached the same conclusions as its European partners regarding the poisoning, the statement said.
The Kremlin said that Putin, in his call, “emphasized the unacceptability of unfounded accusations against the Russian side” and stressed Russia’s demand for Germany to transfer analyzes and samples. Putin also called for German and Russian doctors to work together.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has accused the West of using the incident as a pretext to impose new sanctions on Moscow. He said Navalny’s life was saved by the pilots of the plane that quickly landed in the Siberian city of Omsk when he passed out on board, and by the swift action of the doctors.
“The perfect game of pilots, ambulances and doctors is being portrayed in the West as a ‘happy coincidence,’” he told RTVI in an interview broadcast on Monday.
“They dare to question the professionalism of our doctors, our investigators,” he said. “Arrogance and a sense of one’s own infallibility have been seen in Europe before, and the consequences have been very sad.”
Lavrov, who canceled a planned trip to Berlin on Tuesday, said Russian authorities had conducted a preliminary investigation and documented Navalny’s meetings before he fell ill, but stressed that they needed to see evidence of his poisoning in order to launch a full criminal investigation.
“We have our own laws, according to which we cannot believe someone’s words about the initiation of a criminal case,” he said, adding that “at the moment we have no legal basis” for such an investigation.
Berlin rejected Moscow’s suggestions that it was slow to provide evidence.
With Germany’s findings confirmed by foreign laboratories, “we do not expect the source of bad news, namely us, to be further attacked, but rather that they should take up the news itself,” German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said of the Russian authorities.
When asked why the samples from Navalny were not transferred to Russia, the official representative of the German Foreign Ministry Maria Adebar replied that “Mr. Navalny was on Russian treatment in a hospital for 48 hours. “
Russian doctors who treated Navalny in Omsk said there was no evidence of poisoning, adding that he was too unstable to be transferred. A German charity dispatched a medical evacuation plane to take it to Berlin, after German doctors said it was stable enough to be transported.
“On the Russian side, there are samples from Mr. Navalny,” Adebar said. “The Russian side is called upon, even after three independent laboratories have established the result, to explain itself, and Russia has … all the information and all the samples needed for analysis.”
Navalny was kept in an artificial coma for over a week as he was being treated with an antidote, before hospital officials said a week ago that his condition had improved enough to recover from it.
Putin has repeatedly consulted with Russian Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu about the invasion, Europa Press told Ukraine’s chief intelligence director Vadim Skibitsky.
According to Skibitsky, it was the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), which is responsible for counterintelligence and espionage work, that put pressure on Gerasimov and other military agencies to agree to launch an offensive. .
However, according to the Ukrainian intelligence services, the FSB considered that by the end of February sufficient preparations had already been made to guarantee the success of the Russian Armed Forces in a lightning invasion.
However, according to Kyiv, the Russian General Staff provided the Russian troops with supplies and ammunition for only three days, hoping that the offensive would be swift and immediately successful.
The head of Ukrainian intelligence also emphasized the cooperation of local residents, who always provided the Ukrainian authorities with up-to-date information about the Russian army, such as the number of soldiers or the exact location of troops.
The military offensive launched on February 24 by Russia in Ukraine caused at least 6.5 million internally displaced persons and more than 7.8 million refugees to European countries, which is why the UN classifies this migration crisis as the worst in Europe since World War II (1939-1945). gg.). ).
At the moment, 17.7 million Ukrainians are in need of humanitarian assistance, and 9.3 million are in need of food aid and housing.
The UN has presented as confirmed 6,755 civilian deaths and 10,607 wounded since the beginning of the war, stressing that these figures are much lower than the real ones.
A Stockholm court on Monday sentenced a former Swedish intelligence officer to life in prison for spying for Russia, and his brother to at least 12 years in prison. In what is considered one of the most serious cases in Swedish counterintelligence history, much of the trial took place behind closed doors in the name of national security.
According to the prosecution, it was Russian military intelligence, the GRU, who took advantage of the information provided by the two brothers between 2011 and their arrest at the end of 2021.
Peyman Kia, 42, has held many senior positions in the Swedish security apparatus, including the army and his country’s intelligence services (Säpo). His younger brother, Payam, 35, is accused of “participating in the planning” of the plot and of “managing contacts with Russia and the GRU, including passing on information and receiving financial rewards.”
Both men deny the charges, and their lawyers have demanded an acquittal on charges of “aggravated espionage,” according to the Swedish news agency TT.
The trial coincides with another case of alleged Russian espionage, with the arrest of the Russian-born couple in late November in a suburb of Stockholm by a police team arriving at dawn in a Blackhawk helicopter.
Research website Bellingcat identified them as Sergei Skvortsov and Elena Kulkova. The couple allegedly acted as sleeper agents for Moscow, having moved to Sweden in the late 1990s.
According to Swedish press reports, the couple ran companies specializing in the import and export of electronic components and industrial technology.
The man was again detained at the end of November for “illegal intelligence activities.” His partner, suspected of being an accomplice, has been released but remains under investigation.
According to Swedish authorities, the arrests are not related to the trial of the Kia brothers.
“They can strengthen their positions. We understand that this can happen. At the same time, we do not rule out that they will announce a general mobilization,” Danilov said in an interview with the Ukrainska Pravda online publication.
Danilov believed that this mobilization would also be convened “to exterminate as many as possible” of Russian citizens, so that “they would no longer have any problems on their territory.”
In this sense, Danilov also reminded that Russia has not given up on securing control over Kyiv or the idea of the complete “destruction” of Ukraine. “We have to be ready for anything,” he said.
“I want everyone to understand that [os russos] they have not given up on the idea of destroying our nation. If they don’t have Kyiv in their hands, they won’t have anything in their hands, we must understand this,” continued Danilov, who also did not rule out that a new Russian offensive would come from “Belarus and other territories.” .
As such, Danilov praised the decision of many of its residents who chose to stay in the Ukrainian capital when the war broke out in order to defend the city.
“They expected that there would be panic, that people would run, that there would be nothing to protect Kyiv,” he added, referring to President Volodymyr Zelensky.
The military offensive launched on February 24 by Russia in Ukraine caused at least 6.5 million internally displaced persons and more than 7.8 million refugees to European countries, which is why the UN classifies this migration crisis as the worst in Europe since World War II (1939-1945). gg.). ).
At the moment, 17.7 million Ukrainians are in need of humanitarian assistance, and 9.3 million are in need of food aid and housing.
The Russian invasion, justified by Russian President Vladimir Putin on the need to “denazify” and demilitarize Ukraine for Russia’s security, was condemned by the international community at large, which responded by sending weapons to Ukraine and imposing political and economic sanctions on Russia.
The UN has presented as confirmed 6,755 civilian deaths and 10,607 wounded since the beginning of the war, stressing that these figures are much lower than the real ones.
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