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.

Russian opposition figure Navalny confirms Merkel visited him in Berlin hospital

German Chancellor met with Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny in hospital.

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.

OPCW experts have taken samples from Navalny at Berlin’s Charite Hospital to examine whether traces of Novichok can be found in his blood.

Russia has already censured Germany’s refusal to share with Moscow the details of its medical treatment of Navalny and Berlin’s referral of the case to the OPCW.

In mid-September, German Foreign Minister Heiko Mass said Moscow, as a member of the organization, could forward its requests regarding the alleged poisoning of Navalny to The Hague-based agency.

OPCW has been criticized for political bias in the past.

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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.

Navalny was taken to a local hospital in the Siberian city of Omsk on August 20 after collapsing on a domestic flight. He was airlifted to Germany on August 22.

On September 2, the German government claimed that Navalny had been poisoned with a Novichok-family toxic agent. But the Russian doctors who tested his blood for poisoning before he was moved to Germany said the tests were negative.

Western governments have since been attacking Russia with accusations that it poisoned Navalny.

The Russian government has denied any involvement in the alleged poisoning.

Navalny was discharged from inpatient care at Charite Hospital last Tuesday.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said at the time that Russia was pleased to see that Navalny was making a recovery and had been discharged from hospital, adding he was free to return to the country like any other citizen.

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