navalny
© Instagram / navalny
Russian President Vladimir Putin has revealed that the Kremlin asked Paris for evidence that opposition figure Alexey Navalny was poisoned, but French President Emmanuel Macron refused to provide it.

That's according to Alexey Venediktov, the head of radio station Ekho Moskvy, who was present at a private meeting between Putin and editors-in-chief of Russian news outlets on Wednesday.

Writing on his Telegram channel, Venediktov revealed that Putin explained how Russian doctors did not find any traces of toxic substances in Navalny's body. Putin also noted that Macron refused to send the French analysis to Moscow, wouldn't allow Russian doctors to go to France to conduct tests, and rejected proposals to send French specialists to Moscow with the results.

"If we see that you found something that we hadn't noticed, even the slightest evidence, we will immediately open a criminal investigation," Venediktov cites Putin as saying, noting that the quote isn't verbatim.

According to the Ekho Moskvy editor, the president authorized this segment of the private meeting to be made public.

According to the official Kremlin website, Putin and Macron "thoroughly" discussed the alleged poisoning of Navalny on September 14, 2020. The conversation was later branded by Paris-based newspaper Le Monde as a "dialogue between the deaf."

On August 20, Navalny suddenly fell ill on a flight to Moscow from the Siberian city of Tomsk. He was later flown to Berlin's Charite Clinic for treatment.

Shortly after arriving in Germany, contrary to Russian medical reports, doctors announced that the opposition figure had been poisoned by the nerve agent Novichok. The activist claims that Putin was behind the alleged attack, which has been vehemently denied by the Kremlin.