World leaders are demanding answers after Vladimir Putin’s critic Alexei Navalny was poisoned with Novichok in a “KGB style attempted murder.”
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has slammed Putin and the Kremlin demanding answers over the use of a chemical weapon, which was also used on British soil in 2018 during the Salisbury poisonings.
Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin “will lie and lie and lie” over the concrete scientific proof that Navalny was poisoned with a Russian chemical weapon.
Russia lied in 2018 and ever since over the former double KGB agent Sergei Skripal’s Novichok poisoning in Salisbury and with the 2006 Alexander Litvinenko who was killed.
Litvinenko was also a Russian defector and a former officer in the FSB – formerly known as the KGB, and worked with British intelligent services as a consultant.
Russian agents poisoned Litvinenko with a lethal dose of polonium 210, which induced radiation syndrome.
Nalvany who is a Russian politician and a corruption investigator, is a fierce critic of Putin and the Kremlin.
On a flight back from Moscow to Siberia Navalny fell ill on 20 August, and was later transferred to a hospital in Berlin, Germany.
Johnson said, “We have seen first-hand the deadly consequences of Novichok in the UK.
“The Russian government must now explain what happened to Mr Navalny – we will work with international partners to ensure justice is done.”
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Navalny is a victim of “attempted murder by poisoning,” with the aim to “silence” the fierce opponent of Putin.
Merkel said that “there are very serious questions now that only the Russian government can answer, and must answer” after tests detected the use of the chemical weapon, Novichok.
Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert said in a statement, testing by a special German military laboratory has now shown “proof without doubt of a chemical nerve agent from the Novichok group.
“It is a dismaying event that Alexei Navalny was the victim of an attack with a chemical nerve agent in Russia.”
Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab added that Russia has “a clear case to answer” after the German government said Navalny was targeted with Novichok in an attempted murder.
Raab said, “It is absolutely unacceptable that this banned chemical weapon has been used again, and once more we see violence directed against a leading Russian opposition figure.
“The Russian government has a clear case to answer. It must tell the truth about what happened to Mr Navalny.”
Chris Bryant a friend of Alexei Navalny and Labour MP who sits on the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Russia told LBC, “it seems pretty clear that once demonstrations were getting going in Belarus, the Russian government under Putin was getting nervous.”
Bryant told Eddie Mair that Russia “would take action” against Navalny who is a critic of Putin.
The Labour MP said, “God knows they’ve tried many times before,” he added, “the reason the Russian doctors did not want to let him go” or allow other doctors to see him was because “he’d been poisoned.”
Bryant said the attempted murder of Navlany by Putin has “all the hallmarks of a classic Putin, KGB style attempted murder.”
He told Mair that “Russia will lie and lie and lie, because that’s part of the game.”
The United States’ National Security Council (NSC) called the attack “reprehensible.”
NSC spokesman John Ullyot added, “Russia has used the chemical nerve agent Novichok in the past.
“We will work with allies and the international community to hold those in Russia accountable, wherever the evidence leads, and restrict funds for their malign activities.
“The Russian people have a right to express their views peacefully without fear of retribution of any kind, and certainly not with chemical agents.”
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