Kremlin Sees No Grounds to Launch Criminal Probe into Navalny’s Condition

"First, it is necessary to identify the substance, to find out what caused his condition. It means there should be grounds for an investigation. So far, all we can say is that the patient is in a coma," he said, TASS reported.

If the fact of Russian blogger Alexei Navalny's poisoning with some definite substance is established, there will be a cause for investigation, Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Tuesday.

"If the substance is established and if it is established that this is poisoning, then, of course, this will be a cause for investigation," he said.

The spokesman added that poisoning may be considered only as one of the versions of what happened to Navalny. "So far there are many other medical versions as well," he noted, naming among them use of certain medicines and an individual reaction to certain circumstances.

"All these versions were considered in the very first hours by the Omsk doctors and specialists from Moscow, all of this has been discussed and checked a dozen times already while looking for substances. It didn’t work out, they didn’t find it, they do not see this substance. Maybe, the Germans will see it," the Kremlin representative said.

Russian doctors support information and material exchange with their German colleagues in the situation with Russian blogger Alexei Navalny, the Kremlin spokesman added. "Of course, our doctors are ready on their part to submit samples of the first tests as well as plan to propose exchanging information and various biological materials with German colleagues."

He refrained from answering the question whether Russian doctors had done everything they could and whether extra analysis would be needed. "I cannot say, I don’t know. I have little idea of how many samples are needed and how much information can be derived from them.We are not specialists, you know," he noted.

"The Kremlin cannot be an expert in that. We take no samples, we cannot say anything about sample probe results. It is pointless to speak about that, we know nothing about that."

When asked whether Russian President Vladimir Putin had discussed Navalny’s condition and his transportation to Germany with his Finnish counterpart, Sauli Niinisto, the Kremlin spokesman noted that this topic had been "raised but not discussed."

"This is not a subject for talks, this is not a topic for discussion. But, indeed, it was raised," he said, adding that Russian medics who had been fighting for Navalny’s life for three days needed no special instructions from Putin. "Medics had been sparing no effort to save the patient’s life for three days, and probably this life was saved thanks to them. Later on, our various agencies swiftly settled all formalities, as an exception, taking into account the difficult situation, reckoning with his wife’s request to take him to Germany," he said and stressed that the existing system had worked smoothly.

The Kremlin spokesman has castigated allegations that Russian authorities were involved in the poisoning of blogger Alexei Navalny, branding them nothing but ‘hot air’ that cannot be taken seriously. "We can’t take these… allegations seriously. These accusations, which cannot be true, are nothing but hot air, I would say, so we have no intention of treating it seriously," he pointed out.

The Kremlin is perplexed at Germany’s haste to voice the poisoning theory, Dmitry Peskov went on. According to the spokesman, Russian and German specialists have identical medical data on the matter yet their conclusions are different.

"We don’t understand why our German colleagues are in such a hurry to use the word ‘poisoning,’" he said, adding that this theory was among the first ones considered by Russian medics but "the substance has not yet been identified."

"The matter is that my German colleague rushed to say about a high degree of probability of poisoning," Peskov insisted. "We can share this point of view only partially. Because in this case, he should have said that other options or theories were also probable. These theories were looked into by our doctors but it is wrong to speak about only one theory at this point."

On August 20, the blogger’s spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh said that the plane carrying Navalny from Tomsk to Moscow made an emergency landing in Omsk after he suddenly felt under the weather in mid-flight. Navalny was rushed to a hospital while being in a coma and was connected to a ventilator.

On Saturday, Navalny was transported to Berlin and admitted to Charite clinic.