Foreign policy spokesman for the Green parliamentary group Nouripour: Punitive measures against Russian oligarchs
Photo: Sean Gallup / Getty Images
According to the new findings in the case of the Russian opposition leader Alexej Navalny, the Greens are calling for a sharp reaction from the German government.
At its closed meeting, according to SPIEGEL information, the party decided on Wednesday afternoon that the German government should also take national measures against confidants of Russian President Vladimir Putin aside from a joint reaction by the EU.
The party's foreign policy spokesman, Omid Nouripour, is calling for specific punitive measures such as the freezing of capital or real estate belonging to oligarchs loyal to the Kremlin.
"There are numerous Russian oligarchs who are investing in Germany and who are firmly linked to the Kremlin," Nouripour told SPIEGEL.
"This guarantor of the Putin system must now be pulled immediately," demanded the foreign policy expert.
Nouripour emphasized that with punitive measures against the Russian entrepreneurs, who in some cases made billions in fortunes after the collapse of the Soviet Union, President Putin himself could be seriously affected.
"It cannot be that these oligarchs in Germany can do their business in peace, with which they secure the survival of the Kremlin cosmos," said Nouripour.
Results from the Bundeswehr laboratory cause a stir
The Russian oligarchs are also being targeted in the FDP.
"The Navalny case shows that one urgently needs to think about personal sanctions in the EU," said the foreign policy spokesman for the FDP parliamentary group, Bijan Djir-Sarai.
"This will probably affect some oligarchs as well."
The sharp demands show that the new findings in the Navalny case sent shock waves through the capital on Wednesday.
On Tuesday, a strictly shielded Bundeswehr laboratory, which had been examining blood, skin and urine samples from the poisoned opposition member at the request of the Charité, sent the first results to Berlin.
The Chancellery immediately called all relevant ministers together.
Everyone was told that nothing should leak in advance.
The results from the Bundeswehr laboratory are indeed frightening.
On Wednesday afternoon, Defense State Secretary Gerd Hoofe informed selected MPs that all samples from Navalny were clearly traces of the military neurotoxin Novichok.
The politicians involved knew immediately what this meant.
In the spring of 2018, the former Russian KGB agent Sergej Skripal was attacked in Great Britain and almost killed.
At that time the order is said to have come from Moscow.
Many questions are still open
Evidence from Novichok alone is a clear indication for the German government that Russian government agencies either orchestrated or at least tolerated the assassination attempt on Navalny during an election campaign trip to Siberia.
In any case, in the confidential briefing for the MPs, the government showed itself to be convinced that such a poison cannot be produced and used outside the military apparatus.
However, there are still many unanswered questions.
Even the Bundeswehr specialists do not yet know how the poison could have been administered to Navalny.
It was possible, at least in the briefing for the MPs, to take the poison orally in a drink.
But there are also scenarios in which the perpetrator or perpetrators could have poisoned Navalny with a kind of spray.
Even the application of toxic grease to door handles is technically possible, according to experts in the evening.
For the German government, the Navalny case is a political nightmare.
Relations with Russia are already icy today.
After the murder of a Chechen dissident in Berlin's Tiergarten, whose commissioners believe the investigators to be in the Kremlin, and the hacker attack on the Bundestag, Berlin has repeatedly sent pithy warnings to Moscow.
But they hesitated to tighten the sanctions.
Roth: Germany is witnessing the act - and has to react
Now, after the poisoned opposition leader was admitted to the Charité, nobody in Berlin really knows how to proceed.
Germany was not the scene of a political assassination this time, as was the case with the zoo murder, said the Minister of State in the Foreign Office, Michael Roth, in the confidential telephone line with the Bundestag's foreign politicians.
At the same time, the fact that Navalny is here is a witness to the crime and cannot just stand by, said the SPD politician.
Our worst fears about how the Russian president will treat his opponents have materialized "
Jürgen Hardt, foreign policy spokesman for the Union parliamentary group
Despite the many high-level meetings within the government, which Chancellor Merkel inaugurated the Federal President early on, no clear line is visible yet.
Merkel said on Wednesday evening that not only Germany, but the whole world is now expecting answers from Moscow.
However, hardly anyone knows better than Merkel that the Kremlin has simply sat out many similar scandals in recent years.
Smaller states with close ties to Moscow
For Jürgen Hardt, the foreign policy spokesman for the Union parliamentary group, there is a simple reason: "The Kremlin does not attach any importance to dispelling the tremendous suspicion," says Hardt.
"It is part of the Russian system of repression to let the opposition know what can happen to them. Our worst fears about how the Russian president will treat his opponents have materialized."
Hardt calls for a unified response from the entire EU.
"It has to go beyond the reaction that followed the Skripal attack or the Tiergarten murder."
But whether the EU can agree on common sanctions is open.
Some of the smaller Member States have a very close relationship with Moscow.
It is possible that they will first shift responsibility to the large EU countries.
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