The US Department of State’s claims linked to the case of jailed Russian blogger Alexey Navalny are ‘unfounded,’ the Russian Embassy in the United States claims in a post on its Facebook profile.
According to the statement from the Embassy, the so-called ‘Navalny case’ went hand-in-hand with an aggressive propaganda campaign waged by Western and affiliated Russian media from the very first hours, basing the general thesis on unfounded allegation of Navalny’s poisoning.
The published statement of the Department of State pointed that the US and many in the international community have long demanded for Russia to clarify the attempted assassination of Navalny with a chemical weapon last August.
Stressing that any use of chemical weapons is unacceptable and that anyone who uses them should be identified and held to account, the statement also accuse Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) agents of being behind Navalny’s poisoning.
The US Department of State’s press release on Tuesday said that the United States and 44 other countries – including Britain and Germany – demanded at the global toxic arms watchdog’s Hague-based headquarters on Tuesday that Russia provide urgent answers about the poisoning of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny.
The presentation of the questions coincides with the 98. Session of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) Executive Council, the policy-making body that promotes the effective implementation of and compliance with the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC).
Within the CWC, States Parties- among which are birth US and Russia – are allowed to request clarification on any matter that causes doubt in regard to compliance in accordance with a procedure envisaged with the convention.
Reiterating Russia’s commitment to its obligations under the CWC, the Embassy also dismissed in its statement the “unfounded accusation of the US State Department”on the Russian intelligence agencies’ alleged use of chemical weapons.
The embassy said that Russia has eliminated all national stockpiles of chemical warfare agents in 2017, as documented by the OPCW, stressing that, at the same time, the US remains the only country which has not eliminated its significant arsenal of chemical weapons.
The Russian diplomats’ statement also called on Washington to fulfill international obligations as soon as possible and finalize the chemical demilitarization program to secure the world from the potential use of this type of arms.
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