9/3/20
Western governments are considering coordinated action against Russia after Germany said gravely ill Kremlin critic Aleksei Navalny was poisoned with a military-grade nerve agent. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on September 2 that Germany notified its EU and NATO partners about the issue in order to decide on "an appropriate, joint reaction." "It is certain that Aleksei Navalny is the victim of a crime. He was meant to be silenced and I condemn this in the strongest possible terms, on behalf of the German government," Merkel said, calling it "attempted murder by poisoning." Earlier, the German government said special tests conducted at a German military laboratory showed "unequivocal evidence" of the presence of a chemical nerve agent from the Novichok group. The Soviet-style poison is suspected of being used in other attempts to silence outspoken Kremlin opponents. The latest in a long line of attacks on Kremlin critics sent tensions between Moscow and the West soaring, with Russia facing a chorus of condemnation and calls to conduct a transparent investigation. Merkel said there were now "some very serious questions that only Russia can and must answer."
The head of the German parliament's for Foreign Affairs Committee, Norbert Roettgen, called for Europe to take a clear, tough, and unified line on the issue. "Now we have again been brutally confronted with the inhuman reality of [Russian President Vladimir] Putin's regime," he told the ARD public broadcaster late on September 2. Asked whether work on the NordStream 2 project, an underwater Baltic Sea pipeline to bring natural gas from Russia to Germany, Roettgen, a member of Merkel's ruling conservatives, said, "There must be a European response." "We must pursue hard politics, we must respond with the only language Putin understands -- that is gas sales," he said. Last week, Merkel rejected the idea that the Navalny case should be linked to Nord Stream 2, which is opposed by the United States.
