WASHINGTON — The White House on Wednesday called "completely reprehensible" findings that Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was poisoned with a chemical nerve agent, and said the United States would work to hold "those in Russia accountable." A U.S. government source familiar with U.S. intelligence reporting said there was no reason to doubt the German finding that a Novichok nerve agent was used to poison Navalny, a fierce critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin. German Chancellor Angela Merkel earlier on Wednesday said that a Novichok agent was used in a bid to murder Navalny, who remained in serious condition in an intensive care unit in a Berlin hospital. Novichok are a family of nerve agents developed in the former Soviet Union. Britain has charged two men it called Russian military intelligence officers with using a Novichok agent in a failed March 2018 attempt to kill a former Russian spy and his daughter in the English cathedral city of Salisbury.

Source: International New York Times September 02, 2020 16:41 UTC