Envoy is summoned as UK raises pressure over Navalny poisoning

THE GOVERNMENT has increased the pressure on Moscow to explain the circumstances around the poisoning of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny by summoning the Russian ambassador to the UK to the Foreign Office over the suspected Novichok attack.

Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said Britain was registering its “deep concern” about the alleged use of the nerve agent by summoning Andrei Kelin to speak with a senior official on Monday and called for Russia to carry out a “full, transparent investigation”.

Mr Raab has said it is “difficult to come up with a plausible alternative” to Moscow being behind the poisoning of the vocal critic of Russian president

Vladimir Putin. The diplomat’s summoning came as Mr Navalny, inset, was brought out of a coma by doctors in Berlin, where the 44- year- old has been treated since falling ill on a flight in Russia on August 20.

Mr Raab tweeted: “Today the UK summoned Russia’s Ambassador to the UK to register deep concern about the poisoning of Alexei @ Navalny. It’s completely unacceptable that a banned chemical weapon has been used and Russia must hold a full, transparent investigation.” Russia has denied that the Kremlin was involved in poisoning Mr Navalny.

But there is increasing pressure for Mr Putin to explain how his critic fell seriously ill, allegedly with the same chemical weapon used against Sergei Skripal, the Russian former double agent targeted in Wiltshire in 2018.

Berlin has threatened to rethink the fate of a GermanRussian gas pipeline project if Moscow does not support an investigation, and Mr Raab has been in contact with his German counterpart Heiko Maas.

In response to the Skripal attack, Boris Johnson, as foreign secretary, helped corral a wave of expulsions of Russian diplomats across the EU and US after Britain told 23 envoys to leave.

Mr Skripal and his daughter Yulia were two of five people exposed to the substance, both spending weeks in hospital recovering. But Dawn Sturgess, 44, of Amesbury, Wiltshire, died in July that year after coming into contact with a perfume bottle thought to contain the poison.