The German government finds itself in an embarrassing position since it has let itself be pressured into diplomatic measures against Russia by its Nato ally UK without a thread of evidence.
The German public TV channel ARD reports that the German government is still waiting for London to provide evidence and that the German intelligence service has found no information implicating Russia in the poisoning.
Machine translation by
DeepL:
Skripal case
Berlin continues to wait for evidence
Updated: 07/06/2018 04:57
The federal government has not yet received any evidence from London on the Skripal case. The German intelligence services have no knowledge that Russia could be responsible for the poison attack.
By Michael Götschenberg, ARD capital city studio
The German government is waiting in vain until today: As the rbb Inforadio learned from parliamentary sources, the British government has still not presented any evidence to the German government that would prove that Russia is responsible for the poison attack on the former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter.
Yesterday, the federal government informed the secret parliamentary control committee of the Bundestag about this. So far it had only been known that the poison was Novichok - a chemical warfare agent that had been produced in the Soviet Union.
No findings in Germany either
Furthermore, the British government has not presented anything so far. Neither could the British government prove that the poison used came from Russia, nor that the Kremlin was responsible for the attack. According to rbb information, the German intelligence services have not gained any information from their own sources that would allow such a conclusion to be drawn.
Father and daughter survive attack
After Julia Skripal, her father Sergej has left the hospital again. Julia Skripal made a brief statement to the camera in the UK in recent days: she still finds it hard to believe that she and her father were attacked in this way, she explained. Her recovery had been slow and painful.
The doctors at the hospital in Salisbury said the recovery of the Skriptals was a miracle, assuming that they would not survive.
Massive diplomatic consequences
The Skripal case had led to a dramatic deterioration in diplomatic relations between Russia and numerous Western states. After the British government declared that it was convinced that Russia was responsible for the poison attack on Skripal and his daughter, more than 140 Russian diplomats from 26 European countries, the USA, Canada and NATO had been expelled - a unique incident of this magnitude.
Germany had also participated and expelled four Russian diplomats. In return, Russia had expelled the same number of diplomats from these countries.
Other countries also had Novichoks
The fact that the poison alos existed outside Russia has been reported by the media. According to media reports from NDR, WDR, "Süddeutsche Zeitung" and "Die Zeit" a Russian scientist offered the Federal Intelligence Service a Novichok sample in the 1990s.
Since then it has been known that the neurotoxin had been exported from Russia - at least to the West. It is unclear into which other hands it may have fallen. The behaviour of the British government is also putting the German government in increasing need of explanation.
Beyond the fact that the poison was identified as Novichok, there is no trace leading to Russia, let alone the Kremlin. The decision to participate in the expulsion of Russian diplomats thus seems more than questionable.
Fall Skripal - Berlin wartet weiter auf Beweise
After their diplomatic attack on Russia, the British have grown conspicuously quiet about the Skripal affair. No doubt they would rather forget all about it just to pull it from the archives sometimes in the future as reference for the next provocation against Russia.
But not everybody is prepared to forget about it. The ARD TV channel is equivalent to the BBC and doesn't publish fringe news. The massive political pressure the UK has put on its allies without a thread of evidence will come to haunt the British in the future, since nobody is going to take them seriously any longer.
When will the British government offer its apologies to Russia and its allies?
The very least we should do now is to drop the sanctions against Russia and work for close relations between the EU and Russia.