German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas assessed the likelihood of imposing sanctions on Russia: this step will be inevitable if experts from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) confirm the results of studies of Alexei Navalny's samples carried out in Germany. The German minister made such a statement in an interview with t-online on Saturday, October 3.

“If the results of the German, Swedish and French laboratories are confirmed, then there will be a clear response from the EU,” Maas said.

It became known yesterday that Russia had invited experts from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to the country to study the case of Alexei Navalny. It is specified that the invitation was sent on October 1. Moscow suggested that OPCW specialists interact with Russian colleagues.

On September 29, the Russian Foreign Ministry accused the OPCW of political engagement and bias. “We have no doubt that the forthcoming report on the provision of“ technical assistance ”at the request of the FRG will record the presence of traces of the so-called“ Novichok ”in Navalny's biological samples, selected by the technical secretariat during a secret operation that was carefully hidden from us by all its participants,” the diplomats said.

Navalny became ill on August 20 during a flight from Tomsk to Moscow. In the first two days, doctors from the Omsk hospital helped him. They also introduced him to an artificial coma. On August 22, the patient was sent to a clinic in Berlin.

On September 2, the German government announced that military toxicologists had found traces of a substance from the Novichok group in Navalny's body, and called on the Russian government to respond to this information. Russian doctors noted that they had not identified any poisons. In September, Navalny was brought out of a coma and discharged. Rehabilitation will take several weeks, after which he plans to return to Russia.