«This citizen …» – VG

– As before, the president does not mention the name of the politician, says the Ekho Moscow radio station.

Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, has a habit of referring to Navalny as “the patient in Berlin.” On Thursday, Putin used words like “the person” and “the citizen.”

Russia’s president has said that he personally instructed prosecutors to allow Alexei Navalny to be flown to Berlin for treatment. It happened at a digital gathering at the so-called Valdai club on Thursday.

The Kremlin critic has accused Russian intelligence of being behind the poisoning, by order of the president. Without mentioning the name of Alexei Navalny, Putin said:

– If the authorities really wanted to poison this person, they would hardly send him to Germany for treatment.

Putin’s critic was on his way home from Siberia on August 20 when he fell ill on a plane en route from Tomsk to Moscow. The pilots chose to make a stopover in the city of Omsk, so Navalny arrived first at a hospital there. Two days later, his followers were allowed to transport him to Berlin. Navalny was in a coma.

Vladimir Putin did not take the word “Navalny” out of his mouth throughout Thursday’s session:

– As soon as the wife of this citizen turned to me, I asked the prosecution to verify the possibility that he could go abroad for treatment. I had travel restrictions due to lawsuits, but I still asked the attorney general’s office for permission and it worked, Putin said.

According to Navalny, the trials the president is referring to are purely political.

Putin recalled that the Germans stated that Navalny’s tests had shown traces of the neurotoxin Novitshok.

“Give us biological material and an official conclusion so that we can investigate this further, so that we have the legal and formal basis to open a criminal case,” Vladimir Putin said.

– But they don’t give us anything! Why? We don’t get any explanation for that.

The president also referred to a conclusion by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons that it was a “Novitsjok-like substance”.

– So is it Novitsjok or not? Putin wondered.

Alexei Navalny and his supporters said Thursday they would protest again because an investigation into the case has not been launched. From day one, they have known that Navalny was poisoned. He himself was in a coma for several weeks, while his wife Julia and his closest associates discussed the Navalny case.

“We are ready to fully investigate this case if we receive the necessary information from Germany,” Vladimir Putin said.

Doctors at the Siberian hospital claimed they found no toxins in Navalny’s body. Doctors at the Charité hospital in Berlin were equally clear that they had found toxins, and Navalny’s biological material was analyzed in laboratories in France and Sweden, as well as Germany.

Alexei Navalny and his wife Julia believe that the opposition leader was in a Russian hospital for several days so that traces of poison would disappear from his body.

– The most important thing is that chemical weapons dissolve in the body without leaving a trace. That is exactly why they kept me in Omsk for so long. They waited for everything to decompose in the body and no more traces of Novitsjok remained. But they wasted their time, Navalny said in an interview with the famous youtuber Yuri Dud.

The corruption hunter has repeatedly said that he wants to return to Russia when he is healthy enough to do so. Authorities won’t stop him, but then Navalny will face further trials and arrests, if he participates in demonstrations.