Western nations that have expressed “concern” over the alleged poisoning of Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny are only really interested in undermining Russia’s International status, Moscow’s OPCW envoy told RT on Tuesday.
The “hidden motive” behind this whole case, which saw the German government and its allies accuse the country of using a potent military-grade poison in an attempt to murder the Western-backed activist, was always a “political one,” Alexander Shulgin, Russia’s envoy to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), claimed.
These states only sought to “push Russia back to the periphery of international politics” and “marginalize” its role within the international chemical weapons watchdog, Shulgin said, adding that they were by no means interested in clarifying the circumstances of this case.
My personal opinion is that whatever answers we had given to our Western colleagues…they would have accepted none.
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<figcaption><a href="/russia/538142-russia-opcw-navalny-poisoning/">OPCW appears to collude with Western nations to pin Navalny’s ‘poisoning’ on Russia, Moscow’s envoy to the watchdog claims to RT</a></figcaption>
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Shulgin said that Moscow provided “extensive answers” to all the questions raised by a group of 45 “concerned” nations within the OPCW. These answers were based on the results of a large-scale investigation launched by Russian law enforcement in the wake of Navalny’s alleged poisoning.
Moscow’s probe saw “230 witnesses questioned, 64 biochemical analyses carried out and numerous items collected for comparative analysis.” The Russian specialists “found no traces of organophosphorus agents” in Navalny’s samples, Shulgin said. Yet, all the answers were deemed “insufficient” by the West, he added.
Russia’s envoy to the chemical weapons watchdog also blasted all the accusations leveled against Moscow as “baseless,” adding that both the OPCW Technical Secretariat and NATO members concerned still failed to present any evidence to substantiate such claims.
It is Germany, France, and the UK that have demonstrated remarkable reluctance to cooperate with Russia in this probe since numerous requests for assistance filed by both Russia’s Prosecutor General’s Office and the embassy were simply left unanswered.
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<img src="https://cdni.rt.com/files/2021.10/thumbnail/6160614b2030271fdb3ec34f.JPG" alt="The building of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) is pictured in The Hague. © Reuters / Piroschka van de Wouw" />
<figcaption><a href="/russia/536957-shulgin-opcw-navalny-novichok-us/">US & allies don’t care about Navalny, want to use alleged poisoning to stigmatize Russia, Moscow’s envoy to OPCW tells RT</a></figcaption>
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Germany, France, and Sweden as well as the OPCW itself also refused to share the formula of a chemical agent supposedly found by Western experts in Navalny’s samples with the Russian investigators, Shulgin said. They also failed to answer other questions raised by Moscow, he added.