Moscow-Sana
The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons has published a document that raises questions about the West's account of the alleged poisoning of Russian dissident Alexei Navalny.
The organization attached on its official website its draft report on the implementation of the Treaty on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on Their Destruction in 2020. On August 20, 2020, the General Secretariat of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons dispatched a team at the request of Germany to conduct a special visit to provide technical assistance, on the occasion of the alleged poisoning of a Russian citizen.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova pointed out that this document raises concrete questions in terms of the chronology of events and refutes the West’s account, a note that Navalny left the city of Tomsk in the Siberian region on the morning of August 20, and at 9 am his plane made an emergency landing in the city of Omsk due to the deterioration of the situation. His health is on board and only two days later, on August 22, Navalny was transferred to Berlin with the approval of the Russian authorities.
Zakharova explained that this document meant that the OPCW team had been dispatched to provide technical assistance at the time when Navalny was on his way from Tomsk to Omsk, and she paid particular attention to the fact that preparing a request from a country to the OPCW also needed some time. Germany had to have evidence to draw preliminary conclusions to justify this request.
And Zakharova continued: Taking into account that the team was dispatched on August 20 and this request had to come before that date, which means that it was sent before Navalny left his hotel for the airport, and even if we look at the most imaginary scenario, Berlin should have submitted the request to The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to send its team on the same day, before Navalny woke up on August 20.
Zakharova stressed that the only explanation for this is that this case is "orchestrated with advance planning."
The Russian spokeswoman revealed that the Russian diplomats participating in the session of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons regarding this report, in the presence of delegates of the member states of the organization, submitted to the Director-General of the Organization’s General Secretariat a question about this contradiction, but he declined to respond and remained silent instead.
And Zakharova continued: The German delegate to the organization then intervened in the matter and claimed that the talk was about an error in the document that had not been fixed, but the director general of the secretariat remained silent again and did not support the validity of these allegations. Then, according to Zakharova, the German delegate linked the decision of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to the joint statement that It was issued by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron following a meeting between them at Breganson Castle on August 20, where they expressed their readiness to provide medical aid to Navalny.
"It seems that the officials of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons were watching TV at this moment and saw in Merkel's proposal a call to move to form the team immediately, so will they continue their attempts to convince us of the validity of these lies," Zakharova said.