RUSSIA DISMISSES CLAIM PUTIN CRITIC WAS POISONED

MOSCOW: The Kremlin on Tuesday brushed off allegations that Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who is in a coma in a German hospital, was poisoned and said there have been no grounds for a criminal investigation so far because the politician’s condition may have been triggered by other causes. The insistence by the government that Navalny wasn’t necessarily poisoned came a day after German doctors said tests indicated that he was poisoned and elicited outrage from Navalny’s allies, who say the

Kremlin was behind the illness of its most prominent critic. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed the accusations, saying they “absolutely cannot be true and are rather an empty noise... We do not intend to take it seriously”.