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It is six o’clock on Wednesday morning when Alexej Navalny appears for an interview at the Berlin editorial board of SPIEGEL. The office is just a few steps from the Charité, where Navalny received treatment for a month and was between life and death.
The Kremlin opponent, who had been poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok, was released from the hospital last week.
Four LKA employees ensure your visit. Navalny, who meanwhile could no longer walk, went up the stairs, not the elevator.
Alexei Navalny, 44, is Russia’s most prominent opposition figure. But since the attack on his life in the Siberian city of Tomsk on August 20, he has been on the world stage. Angela Merkel campaigned for her departure to Germany. Because he was poisoned with a substance that can practically only come from Russian state laboratories, the question of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s personal responsibility is being raised around the world. It is not the first time that a Russian opposition activist has been assassinated, but the first time that circumstances have pointed to the Kremlin. Denies any involvement.
The conversation with SPIEGEL is Nawalny’s first interview since the attack. He seems focused on the meeting, he remembers a lot, and yet the consequences of his poisoning can be seen. The scars on the neck show where it was ventilated. When you pour water from a bottle into your glass, it clearly takes a lot of effort, you have to use both hands. Refuses to help. “My physical therapist says I should make an effort to do everything myself,” he says.
Navalny seems more nervous than in previous meetings, his face narrower, his figure more nervous. He has lost twelve kilograms. But his voice is the same, as is his humor, his irony. Next to him is Kira Jarmysch, Navalny’s press officer.
She was sitting next to him on the plane on August 20 when symptoms of her poisoning appeared. Before the conversation begins, Navalny would like to start with something.
Nawalny: It is important to me that this interview appears in the German press. I have never had close ties with Germany. I don’t know anyone here. He did not know a single politician. And now it has happened, you see, my voice is shaking, I have become so maudlin, that German politicians and Angela Merkel, among all people, participated in my destiny and saved my life. The Charité doctors saved my life for the second time and, most importantly, gave me back my personality. So I want to say first of all: I feel enormous gratitude to all Germans. I know it sounds a bit pathetic now, but Germany has become a special country for me. I had almost no connection here, I was only three years ago for the first time in Berlin! And then so much human concern, of so many people.
SPIEGEL: Our readers will be delighted. How are you today, Mr. Navalny?
Nawalny: Much better than three weeks ago, and it gets better every day. I was only able to climb ten flights of stairs recently, now I can get to the fifth floor. The most important thing for me is that my mental capacity has returned. Well, we might find out otherwise in the course of the interview (laughs).
SPIEGEL: You wrote on Instagram that you can’t stand on one leg anymore.
Nawalny: I can do it again. My last job is to stand on one leg and stretch the other leg forward, which is what I train every day. These are actually exercises that some ninety-year-olds do in the park.
SPIEGEL: Can you sleep well?
Nawalny: This is my biggest problem. I used to laugh at people with sleep problems because I never had them. But then came the coma, the anesthesia, the weaning from the narcotics, that long state of lameness when he wasn’t sleeping or awake. Since then I have not been able to fall asleep without sleeping pills.
SPIEGEL: When he lost consciousness, he was a Russian opposition activist. When you woke up from your coma, you were a figure in world politics. Chancellor Merkel visited him by the bedside. What were you talking about?
