Russia denounces as ‘unacceptable’ US claims over Navalny case

Russia has lambasted as "unacceptable” a statement by the United States alleging that senior Russian officials might have been behind the purported poisoning of Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny.

According to reports, in a statement on Thursday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Moscow considered “unacceptable any direct or indirect suggestions that Russian officials were involved in this.”

His comments were in response to claims made by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo who on Wednesday alleged that “it is a substantial chance that” the poising of Navalny with Novichoknerve agent “actually came from senior Russian officials.”

Navalny, 44, got ill on a domestic Russian flight on August 20. He was later transported to the German capital, Berlin, where he is currently under observation.

Doctors at a Russian hospital, where he was initially admitted to, found no traces of poisoning in his blood or tissue samples and said that the deterioration in his health had been caused by a sudden drop of glucose in his blood due to a metabolic imbalance.

The opposition figure’s associates and the European countries claim that the purported use of Novichok, a military-grade nerve agent, allegedly showed that only Moscow could be responsible.

The Russian government has fiercely rejected any involvement in the so-called “poisoning” case, warning other countries against jumping to conclusions without knowing the full facts.

After initial claims were made that he had been poisoned, Moscow asked Germany for his medical records and warned other countries against jumping to conclusions without knowing the full facts.

Russia has “an interest in finding the reasons for what happened” to Navalny, Peskov further said on Thursday, renewing Moscow’s complaint that it had not received information from Berlin on the results of medical tests that led Germany to conclude that Navalny was poisoned.

He also stressed that Russian officials were seeking cooperation with those of Germany but did not see their efforts being reciprocated.

SS