Last week, after German authorities announced that they would be treating Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny’s case as an “attempted murder by poisoning,” some German lawmakers and their European colleagues pressed Berlin to end the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project.
The final decision on the future of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project in connection with the Navalny case will be Europe’s to make, not Berlin’s, Chancellor Angela Merkel has said, dpa has reported.
Speaking at a closed meeting of the Christian Democratic Union-Christian Social Union on Tuesday, Merkel reportedly told faction leaders that “a final decision has not been taken” on the Nord Stream 2 issue.
Last week, German authorities announced that a Bundeswehr analysis of Navalny’s samples had found that he had been poisoned by a nerve agent of the so-called ‘Novichok’ group, the same poison which UK authorities accused Russian intelligence of using against a former double agent in southern England in 2018.
Merkel said that German authorities would be treating the Navalny case as “an attempted murder by poisoning” and would consult with NATO and European Union allies and partners on how to proceed.
Earlier Tuesday, the Russian Foreign Ministry reiterated that Moscow expects Berlin to share all the available data regarding Navalny, including the results of the Bundeswehr’s lab tests and other ‘evidence’ they have.
On Thursday, Russian Foreign Intelligence Service director Sergei Naryshkin told Sputnik that it “could not ruled out” that foreign intelligence services were behind the situation surrounding Navalny’s alleged ‘poisoning’.
Less than a day before the ‘poisoning’ announcement last Wednesday, Merkel told a group of US senators threatening Germany with sanctions over Nord Stream 2 that the pipeline project would be completed, notwithstanding US threats.
Navalny fell gravely ill on August 20 during a Moscow-bound flight from the Siberian city of Tomsk. His plane made an emergency landing in Omsk, and doctors worked round-the-clock for two days to save his life before his transfer to Germany.
On Monday, the German doctors treating Navalny announced that he had come out of a coma and was responding to speech stimuli, and was being weaned off mechanical ventilation.
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Sourse: sputniknews.com
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