When asked by RT, German government representatives failed to explain the mystery surrounding Alexey Navalny's associate M. Pevchikh, who was with him at the time of the alleged poisoning and fled for Germany shortly.
German government spokespeople were grilled by RT Deutsch during a press conference on Monday. The officials, however, failed to provide any actual answer about the woman identified by Russian authorities as Marina Pevchikh.
“I can’t tell you anything about this. We must not forget that an attempt was made on the life of Mr. Navalny with the use of a poisonous substance. But I can’t tell you anything about the location of an individual,” Steffen Seibert stated.
The associate of the Kremlin critic was reportedly together with Navalny in Tomsk before his alleged poisoning. Unlike all other individuals who interacted with him on that day, she did not cooperate with Russian investigators and fled the country to Germany.
Pevchikh has spoken on the matter with Meduza, a Latvia-based Russian language news site, claiming she was never approached by the police. She also said her name is actually Maria, not ‘Marina’.
German officials have also failed to explain how a Russian citizen managed to obtain a permit for entering the country that fast. Still, little is actually known about Pevchikh, who is believed to hold a UK residence permit – or even citizenship. Moreover, only a few photos of her exist, despite her close association and repeated trips alongside Navalny, who is a very public figure.
The saga of the Navalny ‘poisoning’ kicked off on August 20, when he fell ill on a flight from Tomsk to Moscow. After an emergency landing in Omsk, a Siberian city 2,000 km east of the Russian capital, he was taken to a local hospital in an unresponsive condition.
The opposition figure was flown to Berlin’s Charite clinic two days later, where he is currently being treated. While Russian doctors have found no traces of toxic substances in samples collected from Navalny, their German counterparts have claimed he was poisoned with a variant of the infamous nerve agent family ‘Novichok’. Creators of that family of toxic substances have already said his symptoms did not correspond with the exposure to the agent, however.
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