Breaking: German Foreign Minister Threatens Sanctions over Alexei Navalny’s Poisoning

The German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said there were “several indications” Moscow was behind the attack.

The EU has come under pressure to take decisive action against Russia over the Alexei Navalny’s poisoning. Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said today that Germany was planning to discuss possible sanctions on Russia over the incident.

“If in the coming days Russia does not help clarify what happened, we will be compelled to discuss a response with our allies,” Heiko Maas said. Any sanctions decided should be “targeted,” he added. Germany is the current head of the European Union and is under pressure to act strictly with Russia over Navalny’s poisoning.

Navalny has fallen ill on a flight last month and was treated in a Siberian hospital before being evacuated to Berlin in Germany for specialist treatment.

Anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny has long been the most prominent face of Russian opposition to President Vladimir Putin. He has called Mr Putin’s party a place of “crooks and thieves”, accused the president’s system of “sucking the blood out of Russia” and vowed to destroy the “feudal state” being built.

Earlier in the week, the German government announced that they were sure that Navalny had been poisoned with the military-grade nerve agent Novichok, the same chemical weapon British authorities say was used against Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter in 2018.