Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny attacked and poisoned Soviet-era nerve agent Novichok on Wednesday, the German government said Wednesday, with new verification results.Navalny, a politician and corruption researcher who is one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest critics, fell ill on a flight back to Moscow from Siberia on 20 August and transferred to a hospital in the Siberian city of Omsk after an emergency landing of the plane.
Two days later, he was transferred to the Berlin Charity Hospital, where doctors said last week that initial tests indicated navalny had been poisoned.
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert said on Wednesday that tests conducted through a special German army laboratory had now shown “undoubted evidence of a novichok nerve agent.”
“It’s a shocking occasion for Alexei Navalny to attack with a nerve chemical agent in Russia,” Seibert said.”The German government condemns this attack in the most powerful terms.”
In an update shortly after the government announcement, the Charity Hospital said Navalny was in a serious condition and was still connected to a fan, but said it “continues to improve.”
“It’s very likely that the recovery will be long,” he said in a statement.”It is still too early to assess the long-term effects that may occur in relation to this severe poisoning.”
The British government has known Novichok as the poison used in 2018 against the former Russianopia Sergei Skripal and his daughter in England.The nerve agent is a cholinesarase inhibitor, a component of the elegance of the ingredients that charity doctors know at Navalny.
Germany demanded a reaction from the Russian government. The Kremlin said Wednesday that he had still been informed of Navalny’s poisoning with a nerve agent.
“This data has been transmitted to us,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told official news agency Tass.
Seibert said the German government will inform its European Union and NATO partners of the results.He said he will consult with his partners in courtesy of the Russian reaction “on a proper joint reaction.”Germany will also play the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemicals Weapons, he added.
Navalny’s allies in Russia insisted that he had been intentionally poisoned through the country’s authorities, accusations that the Kremlin dismissed as “an empty noise.”
“Poisoning Navalny with Novichok in 2020 would be exactly the same as leaving an autograph at a crime scene like this,” said Leonid Volkov, an old friend and strateman of Navalny’s in a tweet containing a photo of Putin’s call and a signature next door..
Russian doctors who treated Navalny in Siberia disputed the location of the poisoning by the German hospital, saying they had ruled out the poisoning as a diagnosis and that their tests for cholinesterase inhibitors were negative.
Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a Putin critic living in exile in London, told CBS News in 2017 that Navalny could do little to prevent an attack from occurring.”It’s like walking on a structure with bricks falling from above.A brick could hit, you, it might not hit it.The only option you have is to walk on this or not.”
In 2017, “CBSN: On Assignment” spent a week with Navalny.Watch the video here: