Peskov: There is too much absurdity in this story

In the situation with the founder of the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), there is too much absurdity to take anyone’s word for it, said Dmitry Peskov, press secretary of the Russian President.

“There is too much absurdity in this whole story for anyone to take their word for it. Therefore, we are not going to take anyone’s word for it,” Peskov told reporters when answering a question about the discovery of traces of Novichok poison on a bottle of water that Navalny drank in a hotel room.

He recalled that this bottle was exported outside Russia. “We cannot explain this, because such a bottle, if there was one, was exported somewhere – to Germany or somewhere else. That is, what could have become evidence in favor of the poisoning, unfortunately, was taken out,” the Kremlin spokesman said.

“Also, toxicologists say, of course, that if there was a bottle with traces of a military sending nerve agent, then, of course, hardly anyone could take it somewhere. I would not have time. That is, you see, the number of absurdities here, the number of questions is growing every day,” added Peskov. The only thing that can shed light on what happened with Navalny is the exchange of information, evidence and biomaterials, as well as joint work, he stressed.

On September 17, the FBK press service reported that after Navalny’s health condition deteriorated, his team found a bottle of water in the room of the Tomsk hotel where he was staying, on which German specialists subsequently found traces of a poisonous substance from the Novichok group. The founder of the Cinema for Peace Foundation, Yaka Kizil, later said that the bottle of water was delivered to Germany on a German rescue plane.

Navalny lost consciousness on August 20 during a flight from Tomsk to Moscow. He was taken to a hospital in Omsk, where he stayed for two days. Local experts did not find traces of poisoning in his analyzes. On August 22, he was transferred to the Charite clinic in Berlin.

The German side claims that Navalny was poisoned with the poison of the Novichok group. Russia requested data from a survey of the oppositionist by German experts, but Germany refused to provide information without Navalny’s consent. On September 7, Navalny’s condition improved: he was disconnected from a ventilator and taken out of an artificial coma. On September 15, the founder of FBK published the first photo after hospitalization.