Polish FM calls on EU to demand int'l investigation into Navalny affair

The EU should demand from the Russian government an "internationalisation" of the investigation into an attempt to poison Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny, Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau said in Berlin on Friday.

Rau said that one of the subjects of an informal meeting of EU foreign ministers was the poisoning attempt on Navalny.

"We unanimously came to the conclusion that we all support and so the EU should support the insistence from the Russian government of the internationalisation of that investigation. The matter is clear. What happened, that attempt to poison a leading activist of the democratic opposition in Russia, unambiguously indicates the state of respect of human rights and the condition of democracy in the Russian Federation," the foreign minister said.

Rau went on to highlight the difficulty in trusting the Russian government to conduct a thorough and objective investigation, to find the perpetrators and then in a transparent and comprehensive way to share the results of that investigation with the international public.

Doctors at Berlin's Charite hospital announced on Friday that Navalny's condition was stable, that the symptoms were subsiding, but that the politician was still being kept in a chemical coma.

Navalny was first hospitalised on August 20 in the Siberian city of Omsk after falling ill and losing consciousness on board a flight from Tomsk to Moscow. On Friday night, he was transported to the Berlin hospital at the request of his family. An initial diagnosis by German specialists was that he had been poisoned.