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Hospital tests have shown that Putin’s critic Alexei Navalny was “without a doubt” poisoned with a nerve agent from the novichok group, the German government said.
Tests on samples taken from the Russian opposition leader from his hospital bed in Berlin showed the presence of the Soviet-era agent, German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert said.
He said tests by a special German military laboratory showed evidence of “a novichok group chemical nerve agent.”
Alexei Navalny was transferred from Omsk, Russia to a hospital in Berlin on August 22.
Novichok was used to poison former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury, Wiltshire, in 2018 and is one of the deadliest nerve agents ever created.
Navalny, 44, fell ill on a flight back to Moscow from Siberia on August 20 and was transferred to a hospital in the Siberian city of Omsk after the plane made an emergency landing.
After much opposition from the Kremlin and doctors in Omsk, Navalny was finally flown to Germany on a medical plane to the Charite hospital in Berlin, where doctors said last week there were signs. had been poisoned – something that the Russian doctors denied.
Seibert said the German government will inform its partners in the European Union and NATO about the test results and consult with them “about an appropriate joint response” after Russia responds to the results.
On Friday, Navalny’s doctors said his symptoms are improving and he is now stable, with “no immediate danger to his life,” although “it is too early to assess the possible long-term effects.”
They said the poisoning was “serious” after confirming earlier last week that he had been poisoned with a substance from the group of cholinesterase inhibitors, a series of chemicals that prevent the breakdown of a neurotransmitter called acetylcholine.
Navalny marches in memory of murdered Kremlin critic Boris Nemtsov in Moscow in February
Police officers have been standing guard outside the Charite hospital in Berlin.
If acetylcholine accumulates, it creates a blockage in the nervous system.
They said Navalny remains in an induced coma in intensive care on a mechanical ventilator and is being treated with atropine, which is used to treat certain types of pesiticide and nerve agent poisoning.
There are more than 100 formulations in the novichok family, all developed by the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s.
Novichok agents disperse as an ultrafine powder rather than a gas or vapor and can be inhaled, ingested, or absorbed through the skin.
They are “highly illegal, extremely powerful” and are created to avoid detection, biology and chemistry specialist Andy Oppenheimer told Sky News.
Significantly, several of the novichok chemicals are so-called binary weapons, with two less toxic precursor chemicals that can be mixed prior to use.
This makes them safer to transport and handle.
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One of them is novichok-5, derived from the powerful chemical A-230. Its precursor chemicals are ordinary organophosphate pesticides and can be legally manufactured at manufacturers of agricultural chemicals.
According to Dr. Vil Mirzayanov, who worked in the novichok program in the Soviet Union until he fled to the US, the legitimate use of chemical precursors was deliberate, as it meant that they were not included on the Convention’s control list. of Chemical Weapons.
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