MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 02nd December, 2020) Russia hopes that full correspondence on the Russian side's request for technical assistance in the case of Alexey Navalny will be published very soon, by agreement with the technical secretariat of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), Russia's Permanent Representative to the OPCW Alexander Shulgin told Sputnik.
"Russia and the TS [OPCW Technical Secretariat] continue to agree on modalities for technical assistance [in the Navalny case], including its various aspects: logistic, legal, technical, operational and others. It is not yet possible to predict when and how the ongoing discussions will end," Shulgin said.
At the same time, he drew attention to the zeal with which the technical secretariat had begun to work on a similar request from Germany. The envoy recalled that the Germans had allegedly turned to the TS with a request for assistance on September 4, although in fact they announced this only on September 14, "however, the next day, September 5, an "OPCW assault team" landed in Berlin and took biological samples on September 6 from a patient at the Berlin clinic of Charite.
"We, the Russian Federation, turned to the TS with a request on October 6. After almost 2 months we have to admit that 'things are still there.' The work on the parameters is being delayed, and obviously through no fault of ours. It will be all the easier to do this because very soon, as we hope, by agreement with the technical secretariat, a full correspondence with OPCW experts on the topic of our request for technical assistance will be published," the permanent representative said.
