Maas: Russian ambassador summoned over Navalny

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said on Wednesday the Russian ambassador was summoned to his ministry and told in "unmistakable" terms of Germany's call for the Alexei Navalny case to be clarified "in full and with full transparency."

On Wednesday, the German government said Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was poisoned with the same type of Soviet-era nerve agent that British authorities identified in a 2018 attack on a former Russian spy, citing new test results.

"We now know that there was an attack with a chemical nerve agent," Mass said, speaking alongside German Defence Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer

"That makes it even more urgent to determine who was responsible in Russia and to hold them to account," Maas added.

Navalny, a politician and corruption investigator who is one of Russian President Vladimir Putin's fiercest critics, fell ill on a flight back to Moscow from Siberia on Aug 20 and was taken to a hospital in the Siberian city of Omsk after the plane made an emergency landing.

He was transferred two days later to Berlin's Charité hospital, where doctors last week said initial tests indicated Navalny had been poisoned.

British authorities identified Novichok as the poison used in 2018 on former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in England. The nerve agent is a cholinesterase inhibitor, part of the class of substances that doctors at the Charite initially identified in Navalny.

Germany has demanded a response from the Russian government.

The Kremlin said on Wednesday it hadn't been informed yet of Navalny being poisoned with a nerve agent.