UK's Johnson backs calls for probe into Navalny case

LONDON: itain will back an independent investigation into the suspected poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Wednesday.

"We need a full, transparent investigation into what happened. The perpetrators must be held accountable and the UK will join international efforts to ensure justice is done," he said.

Johnson's intervention comes as the 44-year-old Kremlin critic was being treated in a Berlin hospital after falling ill on a flight in Siberia last week, and mounting concern from Western powers.

But it will likely do little to improve strained diplomatic relations between London and Moscow, after two suspected Kremlin-linked poisonings on British soil, and accusations of political meddling.

In 2006, President Vladimir Putin was blamed for the radiation poisoning death of former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko in the British capital.

In 2018, the Kremlin was also accused of being behind the attempted murder of double agent Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, southwest England, using a weapons-grade nerve agent.

London in July accused "Russian actors" of trying to disrupt the December election by circulating leaked documents about a possible post-Brexit trade deal with the United States.

And it also alleged that Russian hackers of trying to tried to steal vital coronavirus vaccine research from British, US and Canadian labs.

The Kremlin has denied all of the accusations.

Last week a cross-party group of British lawmakers wrote to Russia's ambassador in London calling for a "full and independent" international probe into claims that Navalny was poisoned.

The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Russia said the probe was "the only way to avoid the suspicion that the Russian state has been directly involved".

Russia on Tuesday dismissed as premature the findings of German doctors treating Navalny that traces of substances used in nerve agents as well as medicines and insecticides were found in his system.