Russia ready to cooperate with Germany on Navalny incident 24 hours per day: Diplomat

MOSCOW, Sep 6, 2020, TASS. Moscow is ready to cooperate with Berlin on the situation with Russian blogger Alexei Navalny 24 hours per day, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told Rossiya-24 TV channel, TASS reported.

“Berlin should show operational efficiency,” the diplomat stressed. “We are ready for cooperation with the German side 24 hours per day.”

“We are trying to encourage Berlin to give a swift response to the respective requests. <...> We hear calls from partners in the North Atlantic Alliance for an international investigation, for turning to an international organization, but even regardless of this if this is an investigation, it should be carried out within the legal framework – and this is the way we are going,” Zakharova said, noting that no response to the requests had been sent so far.

“If Berlin needs operational efficiency, this is the German side that needs to show this operational efficiency,” she said.

Alexei Navalny was hospitalized in Omsk on August 20 after his health deteriorated rapidly during his flight from Tomsk to Moscow. He was in a coma and was put on a ventilator. Later he was airlifted to the Charite hospital in Germany. The doctors reported that the traces of intoxication were found in his blood. Currently, the symptoms of Navalny’s intoxication are gradually disappearing.

On Wednesday, the German government said that German military toxicologists had found traces of a Novichok-class nerve agent in blogger Alexei Navalny’s body. Berlin called on Moscow to explain the incident and promised to inform the Russian ambassador on results of the blogger’s tests.

The German Cabinet’s spokesman, Steffen Seibert, said that Germany would notify the European Union, NATO and the OPCW of the latest information in Navalny case and would “discuss an appropriate joint response with the partners in the light of the Russian response.” However, he did not elaborate on what steps could be taken.