The Kremlin is dismissing questions about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s involvement in the poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
Navalny, a 44-year-old activist who is one of Putin’s most prominent critics, suddenly fell ill and collapsed on a plane after drinking a cup of tea at an airport in Siberia. His spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh immediately claimed that Navalny had been poisoned.
The Charite hospital in Berlin, where Navalny was airlifted, announced on Monday that he “was poisoned by a substance from the group of active ingredients called cholinesterase inhibitors.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov pushed back on the German hospital’s evaluation and called the finding “hasty,” according to Politico.
“We have not yet learned anything new from this statement,” Peskov said on Monday.
When asked Tuesday about Putin’s alleged involvement in the poisoning, Peskov blasted the claims as “empty noise.”
“We cannot take the accusations you have voiced seriously,” he said.
The diagnosis came after a frenzied effort to move Navalny from a hospital in Siberia to Germany. Russian doctors had initially said they found no indication of poison and would not release Navalny to be taken to Europe for treatment given his condition, although approval was given for him to travel on Friday after he was evaluated by German doctors in the Russian city of Omsk.
Peskov also said the Kremlin doesn’t “understand why our German colleagues are in such a hurry in using the word poisoning” and is refusing to open a criminal investigation into the incident.
Other Putin critics, including journalists and human rights activists, have faced sudden and mysterious deaths and assassinations.
