DISINFO: The "Novichok group" does not really exist
SUMMARY
Professionals are not silent. They directly say that the clinical picture of the poisoning is completely different, that the “Novichok group” does not really exist, and that Berlin stubbornly avoids cooperation because it does not provide any information that would at least confirm the statements it has made. In short, Germany has told an absolute lie obvious to everyone, not caring about giving even a little certainty.
RESPONSE
This is part of a pro-Kremlin disinformation campaign on the poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny after the use of a chemical nerve agent of the Novichok group was established beyond any doubt by a specialist Bundeswehr laboratory. An effort to cast a shadow of doubt on the tests conducted in Germany. The test proving Navalny's poisoning was conducted in a special German military lab, according to the government spokesman Steffen Seibert. Navalny was certainly not suffering from low blood sugar, as the Russian doctors who first treated his mysterious illness had claimed, or even a standard detective-novel poison like arsenic or cyanide. It was something far more dangerous, requiring the attention of the Army’s chemical weapons specialists. As for the claim, that "Novichok" does not exist, in September 2017, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) confirmed the full destruction of the 39,967 metric tons of chemical weapons possessed by Russia, but Novichoks were never declared to the OPCW and weren’t included in the Chemical Weapons Convention until 2019. After the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal with Novichok in Salisbury in 2018, Dr. Vil Mirzayanov said that “many countries could have had test samples, but production was only refined in the U.S.S.R. and Russia” and that Russia had to be behind the attempt on the Skripals because it “is the country that invented it, has the experience, turned it into a weapon... has fully mastered the cycle”. German Die Zeit says Alexei Navalny was poisoned with the newest type of chemical warfare agent Novichok - slower in effect than the already known Novichok, but more dangerous. The new poison could not be created in any other conditions, except for the laboratories of the special services. See similar cases claiming that Russia doesn’t have Novichok anymore, that Poisoning of Navalny is a provocation to stop the construction of Nord Stream 2, that Navalny case is a special operation used to put pressure on Putin, and just a pretext for the West to enforce Russophobia.