BUDAPEST: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday (Feb 15) referred to as “troubling” a report by 5 European allies blaming Russia for killing late Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny utilizing toxin from poison dart frogs, including that Washington had no cause to query it.
“We clearly are conscious of the report. It is a troubling report. We’re conscious of that case of Mr Navalny and positively … we have no cause to query it,” Rubio advised reporters at a information convention in Bratislava throughout a go to to Slovakia.
In a joint assertion, Britain, France, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands on Saturday stated analyses of samples from Navalny’s physique “conclusively” confirmed the presence of epibatidine, a toxin present in poison dart frogs in South America and never discovered naturally in Russia.
The Russian authorities, which has repeatedly denied any duty for Navalny’s demise whereas he was held in an Arctic penal colony two years in the past, dismissed the most recent allegations as “a Western propaganda hoax”, in response to Russia’s state information company TASS.
When requested why the USA didn’t be a part of the assertion, Rubio stated this was an endeavour by them.
“These international locations got here to that conclusion. They coordinated that. We selected – Does not imply we disagree with the end result. We simply, it wasn’t, our endeavour. Generally international locations exit and do their factor with primarily based on the intelligence they’ve gathered.” Rubio stated.
“We’re not disputing or getting right into a combat with these international locations over it. But it surely was their report, and so they put that on the market,” he added.
Russian opposition chief Navalny died in an Arctic jail colony in February 2024, after being convicted of extremism and different costs, all of which he denied.
