MOSCOW — The Russian government explained Tuesday that it was ready to launch a vigorous investigation into the latest sickening of a primary opposition figure, but only if it could be proved that he was poisoned.
On Monday German Chancellor Angela Merkel endorsed the conclusion of medical professionals at a Berlin hospital that the dissident, Alexei A. Navalny, had without a doubt been poisoned on a flight from Siberia, and named for an quick investigation.
For the time currently being, even though, that does not look probably to take place.
“We really do not realize on what grounds our German colleagues are in this kind of a hurry to use the word poison,” Russia’s presidential spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, advised reporters on a conference contact. “A substance has not been recognized.”
Mr. Navalny, 44, who for pretty much a decade has challenged President Vladimir V. Putin politically and criticized his entourage for corruption, grew to become 1 in a series of Kremlin opponents to collapse abruptly into a coma just after consuming tea.
Physicians at the Siberian hospital that at first handled Mr. Navalny explained laboratory success showed no indications of poisoning, though the hospital’s head physician pointed to a metabolic disorder brought about by minimal blood sugar as the most probably lead to.
At the request of his family members, Mr. Navalny, nonetheless in a coma, was evacuated to Germany by air ambulance on Saturday, and on Monday medical professionals at Charité Hospital in Berlin explained he had been poisoned.
Whilst they had been not in a position to identify the actual poison, the medical professionals explained exams showed it came from a group of chemical compounds recognized as cholinesterase inhibitors, which interfere with the nervous process. They are utilised medically to deal with Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia and in some varieties are also identified in chemical weapons and pesticides.
Ms. Merkel, in a statement issued Monday, explained that “clinical findings indicate Aleksei Navalny was poisoned,” and that Russia must investigate.
It was a clear signal of help from the German leader for Russian opposition figures, defectors, journalists and human rights activists who have explained for many years that the Russian safety companies carry out secret operations to destroy or incapacitate them with poison.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo similarly urged a thorough inquiry.
“The United States is deeply concerned by reported preliminary conclusions from German health care specialists that Russian opposition activist Aleksey Navalny was poisoned,” he explained, calling for “a detailed investigation.”
France on Tuesday also echoed the German place. A Foreign Ministry statement named the poisoning of Mr. Navalny a “criminal act perpetrated towards a significant actor of Russian political existence.”
Mr. Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, explained the German obtaining fell quick of evidence. Russian medical professionals, as well, had detected minimal ranges of cholinesterase in Mr. Navalny, he explained, but ventured that this could have been brought about by a wide variety of things and not just by poison.
He mentioned the German doctors’ failure to recognize a particular toxin. “The substance is absent,” he explained. “Unfortunately, it can not be identified, and analyses do not present it.”
Mr. Navalny’s wife, spokeswoman and individual physician had explained Russian authorities endangered the opposition leader’s existence by delaying his health care evacuation from Siberia for a day to permit time for the poison to metabolize, getting a lot more tough to recognize.
Mr. Peskov also denied a pattern of poisoning of Russian opposition figures.
“Here, I would not sketch out some tendency of murders, taking place in distinct nations of the planet, of these who criticize the president of Russia,” he explained. “This is not the situation.”
Aurelien Breeden contributed reporting from Paris.