The German government said has said the tests performed on samples taken from prominent Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny showed the presence of the Soviet-era nerve agent Novichok. Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman, Steffen Seibert, said in a statement on Wednesday testing by a special German military laboratory had shown "proof without doubt of a chemical nerve agent from the Novichok group". However, the TASS news agency reported that Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia was not informed of the German findings and had no such data.