Alexander Shulgin
Moscow will respond to Berlin's threats to take action over the situation with Alexei Navalny if its threats come true. Alexander Shulgin, Russia's permanent representative to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, told about this, he is quoted by RIA Novosti.
He also noted the readiness of Russia to act in the conditions of the mechanisms of the convention on the prohibition of chemical weapons used by Germany.
Ivan Timofeev, program director of the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC), believes that the situation with Navalny will have a bad effect on relations between the countries. For example, Germany and the EU may be less determined to obstruct US sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline.
On September 7, German government spokesman Steffen Seibert reported that the country's Chancellor Angela Merkel admits a change in attitude towards Nord Stream 2 and the introduction of sanctions against it due to the situation around the Russian. Prior to that, she argued that the project is purely economic and not related to politics.
Alexei Navalny became ill on the morning of August 20 during a flight from Tomsk to Moscow, the plane urgently landed in Omsk. On August 22, the oppositionist was taken to a Berlin clinic. The German authorities announced the poisoning of a Russian citizen with the poison of the Novichok group. Russian doctors claim that the tests did not show the presence of any poisons in Navalny's body. The head physician of the Omsk ambulance hospital No. 1, Alexander Murakhovsky, claimed that the patient had a carbohydrate balance disorder.
