BERLIN: The German government says tests performed on samples taken from Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny showed the presence of the Soviet-era nerve agent Novichok.
Navalny, a politician and corruption investigator who is one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest critics, fell ill on a flight back to Moscow from Siberia on August 20 and was taken to a hospital in the Siberian city of Omsk after the plane made an emergency landing.
He was later transferred to Berlin’s Charite hospital, where doctors last week said there were indications that he had been poisoned.
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman, Steffen Seibert, said in a statement Wednesday that testing by a special German military laboratory had shown proof of “a chemical nerve agent from the Novichok group.”
Novichok, a Soviet-era nerve agent, was used to poison former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Britain. It is a cholinesterase inhibitor, part of the class of substances that doctors at the Charite initially identied in Navalny.
Seibert said the German government will inform its partners in the European Union and NATO about the test results. He said that it will consult with its partenrs in light of the Russian response “on an appropriate joint response.”
Navalny’s allies in Russia have insisted he was deliberately poisoned by the country’s authorities, accusations that the Kremlin rejected as “empty noise.”
The Russian doctors who treated Navalny in Siberia have repeatedly contested the German hospital’s conclusion, saying they had ruled out poisoning as a diagnosis and that their tests for poisonous substances came back negative.
Germany says nerve agent Novichok found in Russia’s Alexei Navalny
https://arab.news/8xm76
Germany says nerve agent Novichok found in Russia’s Alexei Navalny
- Navalny is a politician and corruption investigator who is one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest critics
- He fell ill on a flight back to Moscow from Siberia on August 20
German union calls Lufthansa pilots strike for Thursday, Friday
- Andreas Pinheiro, the union president, said there was “still no offer on the table” from Lufthansa
- Almost 800 flights were canceled during the February 12 walkout
BERLIN: Pilots for German airline Lufthansa will go on strike for a second time Thursday and Friday over a pensions dispute, the Vereinigung Cockpit union said in a statement.
The strike will affect Lufthansa Cargo and passenger flights “departing from German airports between 00:01 local time on March 12, 2026 and 23:59 local time on March 13, 2026,” the union said.
However, flights to several key Middle East destinations will be excluded from the industrial action “in light of the current situation” in the region, according to the statement.
Andreas Pinheiro, the union president, said there was “still no offer on the table” from Lufthansa following a one-day strike last month.
Almost 800 flights were canceled during the February 12 walkout, with cabin crew also staging a strike on the same day.
Pilots for Lufthansa subsidiary CityLine will hold strike on Thursday, Vereinigung Cockpit said, blaming “the failure of negotiations on a new collective wage agreement.”
Lufthansa announced one year ago that it would close Lufthansa CityLine, with operations and staff moved to a new subsidiary.
Destinations in Egypt, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Iraq, Israel, Yemen, Jordan, Qatar, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates will be excluded from the strikes, the union said.
Announcing its 2025 annual results last week, the Lufthansa group reported a forecast-beating operating profit of 1.96 billion euros ($2.27 billion), around 20 percent higher than the previous year.
However, the airline warned it faced an uncertain outlook because of the Middle East conflict.
