Alexei Navalny: How his team found evidence of a Novichok bottle in Tomsk

Alexei Navalny, Russia’s leading opposition figure, has recovered. He left a hospital in Berlin in August after months of treatment for a nerve agent poisoning in Siberia.

Initially, the suspect focused on a cup of tea at Tomsk Airport. But it was a quick response from a member of his team who assured German investigators that the Novichok agent had been administered earlier than him.

When the news came that he was in a coma, Maria Pevchikh knew she had to act quickly. She ran outside that morning to the hotel room she had checked out.

“It was not our decision to think about it – it was clear and that was the only way we could act in that situation,” he told BBC Russian.

Mr al Mr Mr Naval was on his way back to Moscow, leaving members of his FBK anti-corruption foundation behind at the Tomsk Hotel to complete work on a local investigation.

Maria Pevchikh runs her team. They have released many detailed reports accusing the Russian political establishment of corruption and abuse of power at various levels.

“Alexei was a healthy man. We’ve been with him for the last several days, first in Novosibirsk and then in Tomsk.”

“Healthy people don’t fall into a coma for no reason. We knew something was very wrong. And, of course, this is Russia. To my horror, poisoning is almost common here.”

If she had been poisoned, she would have reasoned.

Once the novel team explained what happened, the staff member went into the room with them.

“Initially, they wouldn’t let us in, so we guarded the door to make sure no one else came in. We literally put a chair in front of the door and took our turn to sit on it.”

“We went inside, we had the sense to bring rubber gloves, thanks to the coronavirus we are always with them now.”

Anything the opposition leader may have touched was collected.

“We collected everything we could have touched it.”

In the video, members of Naval’s team can be seen packing various objects and bags, including three plastic water bottles, in a blue plastic bag.

A hotel staff member’s voice is heard: “If you take anything, you need police permission for it, I have been told by the (hotel) director.”

A naval employee replies: “Unfortunately, we cannot meet this demand.”

Maria Pevchikh and her colleagues assumed that they were unlikely to find anything useful. To be able to remove what they had collected, smuggle it and pass the exam, hoping it was “even more microscopic”.

There are no direct flights from Tomsk to Omsk. Alexei Navalny’s plane landed in Omsk only in an emergency.

“We went to Novosibirsk and from there to Omsk,” he said. Pevchikhe said.

In order to attract as little attention as possible, everything they collected from the room, including three water bottles, was “strategically placed” in the team’s luggage.

She was also on the flight when Russian authorities finally allowed the Komatos opposition leader and his close family and allies to travel from Omsk to Berlin.

“If we hadn’t taken that bottle out of Tomsk, they would have disappeared without a trace.”

The act of taking a bottle from a hotel room and then a long route to Berlin has provided remarkable evidence that he was poisoned just before he arrived at Tomsk Airport. But the bottle itself was not a means of poisoning.

During this time, Mr. Navalny was in a coma. German scientists said they had established “vague evidence” that he had been poisoned by the Novichok nerve agent, and their findings were corroborated by laboratories in France and Sweden.

But the Kremlin says an investigation into samples taken from him in Omsk found no toxins in his body. However, Russia has denied the allegations in a statement issued Friday stating “Similar, baseless allegations concerning Russia’s intelligence have been made more than once.

One does not know how and when Alexei Navalny was poisoned, and whether anyone else was at risk of poisoning or contamination.

Biological weapons expert Vladimir Yuglev had earlier told the BBC that he thought the Novichok case was more targeted than the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury in March 2018. When they were attacked by liquids, the Tomsk attack was different and therefore less so. Dangerous to others, he argues.

While Mr Navalny’s anti-corruption comrades were careful to use gloves in the Tomsk hotel room, his press secretary said Novichok’s marks were found only on one of the water bottles, not on any of his other belongings.

German investigators did not have access to the clothes he was wearing on the day it crashed, and Mr Navalny appealed to them to return from Russia this week. Health officials told the Tass news agency that the clothes were seized by Russian investigators and they no longer knew where they were.

For now the Kremlin critic is to stay in Germany to complete his rehabilitation but intends to return home.

The team leader says, “I hope one day we find out how Alex was poisoned.” “We have no idea now. And it’s not up to us to investigate.”