Angela Merkel: Alexei Navalny was poisoned

German Chancellor Angela Merkel described the apparent poisoning of Alexei Navalny as “an attempted murder with nerve agent” after a toxicology test in Germany showed that the opposition leader had been targeted with Novichok. Merkel said the case raises “very serious questions that only the Russian government can answer and must answer.” Previously, a government spokesman said that the test showed conclusive evidence that the Russian opposition leader had been poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok. The test was conducted in a special German military lab, according to the government spokesman Steffen Seibert. Berlin will now confer with its EU and NATO partners to discuss an appropriate reaction to the incident, as well as notifying the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) as to the findings.