Germany has a duty to do what it can to help get to the bottom of the apparent poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, Chancellor Angela Merkel said Friday, but she argued that the issue shouldn’t be linked to the fate of a German-Russian gas pipeline project whose completion the U.S. wants to prevent. Navalny, an opposition politician and corruption investigator who is a longtime foe of President Vladimir Putin, has been at Berlin’s Charite hospital for nearly a week after falling ill on a flight back to Moscow from Siberia on Aug. 20. Germany has pushed for Russia to investigate the case in “full transparency.”