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RT.com<\/p>\n
The alleged poisoning of Russian activist Alexey Navalny is a plot designed to justify sanctions against Russia, the country\u2019s foreign ministry has claimed, the most emphatic denial so far of any official Russian involvement.<\/p>\n
The statement from the Russian diplomats said that \u201cany uninvolved observer, even one far removed from chemistry and\u2026 chemical weapons, logically starts to have a feeling that everything that is happening is an amateurishly staged stunt.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0The official communiqu\u00e9 added that the row had been confected as\u00a0\u201ca sanction shot\u201d<\/em>\u00a0because\u00a0\u201cRussia\u2026 sticks to its guns of not accepting certain rules imposed on it at the expense of national sovereignty, international law and common sense in general.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Moscow\u2019s comments come amid a diplomatic spat over the evidence of Navalny\u2019s poisoning, and the assertion of a number of European countries that Russia was behind it. Spokesman for the Russian Prosecutor-General\u2019s Office, Andrei Ivanov, told reporters on Friday that Moscow had sent its fifth request for further information on the incident to Germany, after previous missives had been ignored.<\/p>\n Ivanov said that\u00a0\u201cnot a single question posed by the Russian side earlier has received a detailed explanation.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0He went on to question Germany\u2019s version of events, in which Navalny was poisoned before he embarked on a Moscow-bound flight from the Siberian city of Tomsk.\u00a0\u201cNo poisoning agents have been found as a result of expert tests held on Russian territory\u201d<\/em>, he claimed.<\/p>\n Russia\u2019s Ministry of Internal Affairs also weighed in on the row, appearing to blame those who accompanied Navalny in Tomsk for conspiring to create the impression that Navalny had been poisoned. The agency said that it had been\u00a0\u201cdetermined during the inquiry that, after receiving the reports of Navalny\u2019s deterioration of health, the group of people accompanying him in Tomsk (Vladlen Los, Maria Pevchikh and Georgy Alburov) removed [potential evidence] from Navalny\u2019s hotel suite in an organized manner.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0Drawing its verdict on the case, it added that\u00a0\u201ctheir actions demonstrate a well-planned provocation.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Navalny made headlines in August after viral footage emerged of him appearing to be taken ill on a domestic flight. After a period of delay, he was transferred to Berlin\u2019s Charit\u00e9 hospital, where doctors and international laboratories claimed that he had been poisoned with a nerve agent of the \u2018Novichok\u2019 class. Navalny has claimed that Russian President Vladimir Putin was behind the poisoning.<\/p>\n These potent nerve agents were also alleged to have been used in the poisoning of former KGB officer Sergey Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury, England, in 2018. Russia has formally denied being behind either incident.<\/p>\n In October, in response to the allegations around Navalny\u2019s poisoning, the EU agreed a package of sanctions aimed at senior Kremlin officials, including Alexander Bortnikov, the head of the Federal Security Service (FSB).<\/p>\n\n