The team around Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny announced on Thursday that a water bottle taken from his hotel room in Tomsk, Siberia, to Germany a month ago contained traces of the neurotoxin Novitjok.
The information means that Alexei Navalny may have been poisoned in a hotel room and not on an aircraft that was thought to have been flown.
When the Kremlin was asked about the allegation on Friday, spokesman Dmitry Peskov stated that Russian specialists had not had the opportunity to examine the bottle and that he therefore could not comment on the allegation.
- We can not explain this because, as you know, this bottle - if it existed - was taken to Germany or elsewhere.
So, something that could have been evidence of a poisoning has unfortunately been removed.
This raises another question: "Why?", Says Dmitry Peskov, reports Reuters.
He goes so far as to call the information absurd.
- It is too absurd in this story to be able to take someone's word for facts, says Dmitry Peskov, according to Reuters.
Want to see more evidence
Russia calls the allegations of poisoning unfounded and has previously said it wants to see more evidence before any formal criminal investigation is launched by its authorities.
Among other things, Russia, according to Reuters, has requested Navalny's medical data from Germany in order to be able to make an assessment themselves.
Navalny has been cared for at the Charité Hospital in Berlin since the end of August and has been awake for some weeks now.