NATO agrees nerve agent used to try to kill Navalny

Alexei Navalny and wife Yulia at a past protest in Moscow. Pic/AFP

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg on Friday condemned the "appalling assassination attempt" on Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny and called on Moscow to answer questions about the poisoning to international investigators.

Navalny, a Kremlin critic and corruption investigator, fell ill on a flight to Moscow on August 20 and was taken to a hospital in the Siberian city of Omsk. He has been in an induced coma in a Berlin hospital since he was flown to Germany for treatment more than a week ago.

German authorities have said that tests showed that he had been poisoned with a chemical nerve agent from the Novichok group. British authorities previously identified the Soviet-era Novichok as the poison used on former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in England in 2018. "Any use of chemical weapons shows a total disrespect for human lives and is an unacceptable breach of international norms and rules. NATO allies agree that Russia now has serious questions it must answer," Stoltenberg said.

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