Merkel’s visit to Navalny meant to politicize situation: Russia

Russia has criticized German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s recent move to visit Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny at the hospital where he was being treated, saying the visit was meant to politicize the case.

“We see it as an attempt to politicize this matter,” Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a statement on Tuesday, referring to the visit. “Frankly speaking, it is difficult to say anything else about it. Because everything that is going on has nothing to do with real intention to find the truth, to find out what happened, to sort things out, to help find some elements to assemble the picture.”

The remarks came after Merkel’s spokesman confirmed reports of the chancellor having paid a personal visit to Navalny at hospital last week.

Zakharova further said that, given the political bias of the Technical Secretariat of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which she said had been demonstrated on several occasions before, Moscow had no doubts that The Hague-based agency would confirm allegations that Navalny had been poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry also reiterated that Moscow had already sent to Germany three requests from the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office for legal assistance over Navalny’s case but so far, none of them had been responded to.

“We are told, again and again, to seek clarifications from OPCW, whose leadership, in turn, says we should refer the issue to the German government,” the ministry said.

SS