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Alternative for Germany (AfD) Foreign Affairs spokesperson Armin-Paul Hampel dismissed the idea that Moscow had poisoned Alexei Navalny with a 'weapon of mass destruction' as 'absurd,' in the Russian capital on Tuesday.

"It is absurd that a Russian government would try to kill a critic of the regime with a weapon of mass destruction and after a failed attempt to still send the concerned person to Germany so that as much evidence as possible can also be collected internationally," said Hampel.

"How crazy do they think the Russians are?" he added.

Navalny arrived for specialist treatment in Berlin aboard a medical plane on August 22, after falling ill during a flight from Tomsk to Moscow on August 20. The original plane had been forced to make an emergency landing in Omsk where Navalny was rushed to hospital.

The German government has said independent laboratories from France and Sweden had confirmed findings by German military toxicologists that Navalny was poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent. Tests by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons also suggest Navalny was exposed to Novichok. Russian doctors who examined the activist in Omsk, said they didn't find evidence of poisoning.

On October 15, EU foreign ministers imposed sanctions on six Russian officials and a state research institute over the case of Navalny’s alleged poisoning.

According to Kremlin spokesperson Dmitri Peskov, the EU took a "deliberate unfriendly step towards Russia," which "doesn't have any logic." He also recalled that Berlin hadn't provided Moscow with a medical examination.

Speaking after meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, AfD party co-leader Tino Chrupalla also emphasised the importance of dialogue between Germany and Russia, saying it was 'absolutely essential.'

Hampel also discussed the expired Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, lamenting that Germany and other European powers had not pressured the USA to update the agreement as other powers, like China and India, gained increased nuclear weapons capabilites.

The AfD politicians travelled to Moscow at the invitation of the Duma, the Russian lower house, and discussed the threat of US sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project as well as the Navalny case, and the German-Russian relations with Lavrov

The German government has imposed sanctions against Russia over the alleged poisoning of Navalny, with Moscow responding with sanctions of its own.

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