PARIS (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 14th May, 2021) The statement of Director-General of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) Fernando Arias that the Russian request for technical assistance in the Navalny case had been prepared in an improper way is unacceptable and has an anti-Russian overtone, Russian OPCW envoy Alexander Shulgin told Sputnik.
In early October 2020, Russia asked the OPCW to send experts to study the biological samples taken from Navalny in a laboratory in St. Petersburg. Initially, OPCW Director-General Fernando Arias expressed his readiness to send a group, but later rejected the proposal of the Russian side, since, according to him, there were no precedents for joint analysis in OPCW practice, and such work was always carried out by the organization independently and independently. On May 10, Arias made new remarks on a number of cases, including the alleged chemical attacks in Syria, the Skripal case, and the alleged poisoning of Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny.
"The [May 10] statement of Arias ... that the Russian request for a technical assistance to clarify the situation around the alleged poisoning of Navalny has been prepared in an improper way is unacceptable," Shulgin said.
He added that such statements had an anti-Russian overtone and were unfriendly toward Moscow.
