Russia Floats New Theory on Navalny Poisoning

Russia added a twist Thursday to its pushback against suspicions that it poisoned Alexei Navalny. Maybe the opposition leader was poisoned, as Navalny and Germany contend, but not in Russia. "We have all grounds to believe that everything which had happened to him from the point of view of warfare agents entering into his body could have happened in Germany," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said, "or on the plane where he was loaded and sent to the Charite clinic." Navalny was flown from a Siberian hospital to Germany for treatment; he was released in September.

Russia maintains that it was not involved in Navalny's illness, Euronews reports, and that there was no poison in his system when he was treated in Siberia. Lavrov provided no evidence for the claims in his news conference Thursday, per the Hill. The EU imposed sanctions on a half-dozen Russian officials after the poisoning, and Lavrov said Thursday that he's almost ready to announce payback measures. "They have been decided," he said, "and we will soon inform our French and German colleagues." The measures and countermeasures affect senior administration officials in all three nations, he said. (More Alexei Navalny stories.)