Poisoned at the Tomsk, Sibera airport, 44-year-old Russian opposition leader Alexi Navalny was diverted on a flight to Omask for emergency medical treatment to save his life. Navalny, an outspoken critic of 67-year-old Russian President Vladimir Putin, when he had the Russian Duma [parliament] amend the Constitution to illegally give Putin an indefinite term in office. Navalny took over from Mikhail Khordorkovsky, once Russia’s richest oligarchs head of Russia’s oil company Yukos, before his arrest and prosecution for tax evasion, subversion, bank fraud, and other phony charges, spending from 2008 to 2013 eating fish soup in a Siberian prison. Puitin has established a habit of getting rid of his opposition, more recently by poisoning. Khordorkovsky was one of the luck ones, spending only five years in prison before Putin forced him into exile, moving to Switzerland.
Navalny was flown in a coma from Omsk to Berlin, where he’s currently in a medically induced coma recovering from suspected Novichok poisoning, one of the deadliest and most rapid-acting agents ever created. Novichok and other similar poisons were banned by the 1992 Chemical Weapons Convention [CWC] at the Hague, Netherlands. Russia singed onto the CWC ban Dec. 5, 1997 but it hasn’t stopped Putin from using the most deadly poisons known to man during his tenure as Russian President since 1999. Former Russian FSB [Federal Security Service] and KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned with Polonium 210 in London Nov. 1, 2006, taking a bout three weeks before his death Nov. 22, 2006. While Putin denied any involvement, a definitive British toxicology report identified Polonium 210, something only produced in Soviet-era nuclear reactors.
Putin was fingered poisoning another exiled Russian double agent March 4, 2018 working for the FSB and KGB Sergei Skirpal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury. Both were hospitalized for weeks but eventually recovered. Toxicology reports also found Novichok in their systems. Responding to Navalny’s poisoning, Germany warned Putin that if they didn’t get some answers about what happened, they might reconsider the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline currently being finished under the Baltic Sea. Northern European Union [EU] countries receive up to 50% of their natural gas from Russia, regardless of Putin’s shenanigans, invading countries like Georgia and Ukraine and poisoning dissidents. “I hope the Russians won’t force us to change our position regard the Nord Streat 2,” German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas told the Bild am Sonntag newspaper.
Mass told the Bild am Sonntag that “if there won’t be any contributions from the Russian side regarding the investigation in the coming days, we will have to consult our partners,” pretending that there would be consequences to Navalny’s poisoning. With the EU buying 40% of natural gas from Russia, it’s possible Germany buys up to 80% of its natural gas from Russia. Mass admitted that “more than 100 companies from 12 European countries are involved [in the construction] about half of them from Germany,” essentially admitting that his country will do next to nothing over Navalny’s poisoning. Like the amount of trade the EU does with China, Mass doesn’t object or threaten China every time there’s a human rights abuse or faulty handling of a deadly crononavirus that infected the world. President Donald Trump has warned Germany before about its dependence on Russian energy.
German’s are good when it comes to PR stunts at the EU or U.N. when it comes to acting like a responsible world citizen. They’re all in when it gets them global publicity like the Paris Climate Accord or the Iranian Nuke Deal. When it comes to doing businesses for energy with pariah states like Iran, Germany turns a blind eye. When it comes to Russia, Germany as gone for the cheapest way to make profit off Russian natural gas when they have other options for buying oil and natural gas from Turkey through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan [BTC] and the South Caucasus Pipeline [BTE] pipelines carrying oil and natural gas to Europe. No, Germany gets a better deal from Putin, regardless of all his international crimes, including his March 1, 2014 invasion and annexation of Crimea. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has other choices but continues to do business with Putin.
It’s no accident that Merkel feels more comfortable dealing with Russia, growing up under Soviet rule in Perleberg, East Germany. She attended Marxist-Leninist training as a youth, finding herself more comfortable with Russia than Turkey, the Caucus region or the Middle East. Angela has watched Putin poison, torture or kill his opposition, destroy Russian fledgling free press and wreck the free market economy started by former Soviet Premiers Boris Yeltsin and Mikhail Gorbachev. But the proof’s in the pudding, doing more business with Putin’s Russia over other options to buy energy through Turkey. It’s a serious situation. It’s serious firstly because it’s the poisoning of another opposition figure. And it’s serious because the substance that was used, Novichok, is banned,” said French Foreign Minster Jean-Yves Le Drian,” to France Inter radio. Like Germany, France plays to the U.N. and EU.
