The news that Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has been discharged from a Berlin hospital where he was being treated for Novichok nerve agent poisoning is welcome. Hopefully he will make a full recovery and continue to fight for democracy in his homeland.

Navalny’s team alleges he was poisoned on the orders of President Vladimir Putin, a claim denied by the Kremlin. The indications, however, as well as Moscow’s record in dealing with its opponents, very much point to Russian involvement. Such outrageous behaviour cannot go unnoticed and must lead to consequences for Russia. 

It is important to keep in mind that tests in Germany, France and Sweden have established that Navalny was indeed poisoned with a chemical agent from the Novichok group.  These chemical weapons are banned under the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1997.

The nerve agent was already used against former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury, UK, in 2018, leading to the death  of a British citizen. Following the UK government’s conclusion that it was “highly likely” that Russia was responsible for this poisoning, a number of limited measures were taken by both the UK and the EU, including the expulsion of Russian diplomats and targeted sanctions against a few Russian individuals.

Although the US government agreed to place sanctions on Russian banks and exports, the sanctions were not implemented by the Trump administration.

The time has come, however, for both Europe and the US to introduce harsher measures against Russia – and have them implemented – in response to this latest outrage.

The Novichok nerve agent has only ever been produced in secret Soviet-era facilities and its use against Navalny suggests either the involvement of the Russian government, or rogue elements within the state, or that supplies of the nerve agent have leaked outside government control, or that possibly someone else has learned to produce it.

If Russia was a normal country it would be bending over backwards to find the source of the nerve agent and it would open an investigation into the poisoning. Instead it has denied that Russia or the former Soviet Union ever developed or made the Novichok nerve agent – despite decades of overwhelming evidence to the contrary – and has accused the West of  a “disinformation” campaign in the case. It has also refused to open an investigation.

Russia must be held to account for this latest incident and there are a number of punitive measures that could be contemplated.

The rejection by the EU of Nord Stream 2, a natural gas pipeline from Russia to Germany, is one possibility. Such a move might even encourage  more coordinated sanctions with the US, which has sharply opposed the project.

Russia’s membership of international groupings should be also restricted.

There should definitely be no return by Russia to the G7, while Russia’s readmission last year to the Council of Europe, an organisation which upholds human rights, democracy and the rule of law should be reversed.

A number of sanctions against Russian economic sectors and individuals should also be considered.

Good relations between Russia and Europe are important, indeed desirable, but Europe cannot simply sit on the fence in the face of such shocking  behaviour by Moscow in the hope of improving ties.

As European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said during her recent State of the Union address: “To those that advocate closer ties with Russia, I say that the poisoning of Alexei Navalny with an advanced chemical agent is not a one-off. We have seen the pattern in Georgia and Ukraine, Syria and Salisbury – and in election meddling around the world. This pattern is not changing.”

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