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Investigators are examining the site in the UK where a former Russian spy poisoned with a Novichok agent in 2018.German officials said today that a similar agent used to poison a prominent Leader of the Russian opposition.
An infamous nerve poison is news again. The German government said Alexei Navalny, a prominent opponent of Russian President Vladimir Putin, had been poisoned with a chemical similar to Novichok, a fatal nerve agent involved in other attacks opposed to Russians that have passed through the existing regime.
A German army laboratory has discovered “unequivocal evidence of a Novichok group chemical nerve agent” in biological samples taken from Navalny, which was transported to Germany for treatment there after being hospitalized in Siberia on August 20, a spokesman for the government Steffen Seibert. Navalny fell ill shortly after drinking tea, which according to his circle of relatives was poisoned. Novichok agents, which were developed throughout the Soviet Union during the Cold War, disrupt chemical pathways in the brain by binding to the enzyme acetylcholinesterase. Without prompted medical intervention, other people exposed to poisons lose control of the muscles that control breathing and blood pressure. Novichok’s operatives were widely seen by the public in 2018 after one of them was used in an assassination attempt against former Russian spy Sergei Skripal in the UK. The attack left Skripal, his daughter Yulia and 4 other people seriously ill; Skirpal and her daughter survived, but one of the passersby died. The attack prompted many countries to push for a global ban on Novichok agents, and last year they were added to the list of regulated chemicals through the Chemical Weapons Convention.
Russian government officials have reported that Navalny, an opposition leader known for his corruption investigations, had fallen on a metabolic disorder or diet-related diet, but German Chancellor Angela Merkel today strongly disputed those claims and demanded an explanation from the Russian government.”The world, ” he said, “is waiting for answers.
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