U.S. and 44 other countries hand over to Russia questions about Navalny

The United States and 44 other countries handed over to Russia questions about blogger Alexei Navalny’s case at the headquarters of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), the U.S. Department of State’s press service said.

The presentation of these questions was carried out in accordance with a procedure envisaged by the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), of which both the United States and Russia are members.

Navalny was rushed to a local hospital in the Siberian city of Omsk on August 20, 2020, after collapsing on a Moscow-bound flight from Tomsk. Later, he was airlifted to Berlin and admitted to the Charite hospital. On September 2, Berlin claimed that having examined Navalny’s test samples, German government toxicologists had come to the conclusion that the blogger had been affected by a toxic agent belonging to the Novichok family. Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov repeatedly emphasized that Russia was ready for comprehensive cooperation with Germany and pointed out that no poisonous substances had been detected in Navalny’s system prior to his transfer to Berlin.

Navalny, wanted for repeatedly violating his probation over his suspended sentence in the Yves Rocher case, was detained upon his return from Germany at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport on January 17, 2021. On February 2, a Moscow court sentenced him to an actual prison term.