MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 26th November, 2021) Moscow will repel any attempt of the United States and its allies to harm Russia's national interests regarding the alleged poisoning of Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny, the country's permanent representative to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), Alexander Shulgin, said on Friday.
The Russian official assumed that the US and its allies are set to use the case to pave the way for new sanctions against Russia, which, for its part, adheres to the chemical weapons convention, according to Shulgin.
"We can only guess what course the events will take at the Hague venue in relation to the Navalny case. I will simply say: make no mistake. Every attempt to harm our country's interests will be duly rebuffed," Shulgin told a press briefing.
The US and 44 other countries sent Russia a list of questions concerning the Navalny case through the OPCW. In October, Moscow sent a counter request addressed to Germany, France, Sweden and the technical secretariat of the organization. However, Moscow called the answers received from the European countries uninformative and "completely meaningless."
In August 2020, Navalny was allegedly poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent and was airlifted to Berlin for medical treatment. After Navalny returned to Moscow in January 2021, he was arrested on charges of violating his parole conditions. Later, his suspended sentence was replaced with imprisonment in a penal colony.
