Russia’s Foreign Ministry awaits German ambassador for Navalny talks

Moscow (dpa) – Russia’s Foreign Ministry is awaiting the German ambassador for clarification on Berlin’s claim that dissident Alexei Navalny was poisoned, the ministry’s spokesperson said on Tuesday.

A source at the German embassy in Moscow said the meeting would be held on Wednesday.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said Germany had not presented sufficient evidence to substantiate the claim that Navalny was poisoned with the Soviet-developed nerve agent Novichok.

“It’s time to show the cards because it’s obvious to everyone that Berlin is bluffing,” Zakharova said in a statement posted on her Facebook page.

“We are waiting for the German ambassador,” she said.

Russia has refused to conduct a criminal investigation into the claim that Navalny was poisoned last month while in Siberia to support opposition candidates for local election.

Navalny spent two days in a hospital in the Siberian city of Omsk before Russian officials allowed him to be evacuated to Berlin on a German-organized flight.

Russian health and law enforcement officials said they found no hard evidence that Navalny was poisoned. Germany says toxicology tests have proven he was poisoned with Novichok.

Navalny, 44, is currently being treated at Berlin’s Charite hospital. The facility said on Monday that Navalny had been woken from his medically induced coma and that he was responding to verbal stimuli.

UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet demanded on Tuesday that Navalny’s poisoning be thoroughly investigated in an independent manner.

High Commissioner Bachelet urged Russia to carry out or to cooperate with such a probe, in light of the German government’s assertion of “unequivocal” proof that a Novichok nerve agent was involved.

“It is not good enough to simply deny he was poisoned, and deny the need for a thorough, independent, impartial and transparent investigation into this assassination attempt,” Bachelet said in Geneva.

When asked whether Bachelet demands an international probe, UN human rights spokesman Rupert Colville told a press briefing that “in theory” it was the job of Russian authorities to investigate.

The UN Human Rights Office was not equipped to carry out criminal investigations, he added.

At the same time, he and Bachelet pointed out that Russia had failed to clear up previous high-profile killings and assassination attempts involving Novichok or radioactive materials. This was “deeply regrettable and hard to explain or justify,” Bachelet said.

Similar calls for an investigation have come from the EU Commission, the Western military alliance NATO and several Western powers.

The G7 foreign ministers of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Britain and the US issued a joint statement with the High Representative of the European Union condemning the poisoning.

The statement noted that Germany has briefed its G7 partners on the clinical and toxicological findings by German medical experts.

“We will continue to monitor closely how Russia responds to international calls for an explanation of the hideous poisoning of Mr. Navalny,” the G7 statement reads.

In Washington, the leaders of the House Foreign Affairs Committee also called on the White House to conduct its own investigation into the poisoning.

“If the Russian government is once again determined to have used a chemical weapon against one of its own nationals, additional sanctions should be imposed,” wrote Democratic congressman Eliot Engel and Republican congressman Michael McCaul in a joint letter.