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Alexei Navalny was released from Berlin’s Charité hospital after spending 32 days as an inpatient, after German authorities say he was poisoned with a novichok nerve agent and with doctors suggesting he could make a full recovery.
The hospital said in a statement Wednesday morning that the Russian opposition politician’s condition had “improved enough to be discharged from acute hospital care,” adding that he had left on Tuesday.
“Based on the patient’s progress and current condition, treating physicians believe that a full recovery is possible,” the statement said, adding that it was not yet clear what the potential long-term effects of the poison would be.
In a new Instagram post on Wednesday, Navalny complained that, looking in the mirror, she thought she now resembled a character from The Lord of the Rings. He thanked the Charité doctors for their “amazing work” and said he had asked to go somewhere “with trees” for daily rehabilitation and physical therapy.
“There are several fun things happening. For example, I cannot throw a ball with my left hand. I can catch it, but not throw it away, my brain doesn’t want to make this move. “
He said a neurologist had told him that in order to improve his mental functions he should again read, write on social media and play video games, and said he was eager to get a PlayStation 5.
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The first time they took me to the mirror, 24 days later in intensive care (of which 16 were in a coma). A character from the movie “Lord of the Rings” looked at me from the mirror. And believe me, he was not an elf at all. I was terribly upset: I thought I would never be discharged. But the doctors kept doing their miracle, I worked with a physical therapist, I ate, I tried to sleep more (the biggest problem so far). In recent days, I was even allowed to go out on the shared balcony 2 times for 5 minutes a day. It is true that the balcony was even more melancholic: the weather was good, the sun was shining, there were some parks and trees below, and I was in the living room. But the day has come, hooray! After 32 days in the hospital, the doctors decided that further recovery does not require hospital treatment, but the normalization of life. Take a walk, spend time with the family. Get into the routine of daily movements. And now, jump, I’m limping through the park in pants three sizes up. First of all, he asked to take me somewhere where there are trees. The plans remain simple: a physical therapist every day. Possibly a rehab center. Stand on one leg. Regain full control of your fingers. Keep your balance. It’s funny, I dreamed of learning how to ride a wakeboard behind a boat along the wave and I learned this summer. Now I am learning to stand on one leg. All sorts of fun things popped up. For example, I can’t throw the ball with my left hand. I can even catch, but not throw. The brain just doesn’t want to make this move. Or write by hand. Until recently, it didn’t work online. All the time I started in a column. Rehabilitation, in general. Many thanks again to the entire team of doctors at the Charite Clinic and to Professor Eckard personally. They did an incredible job. Thank you all for your support 💪. It was and still is very important. Don’t think I don’t know what you’re writing. As soon as I started thinking more or less, they read the comments to me. By the way, I’ll try to spend a little more time on social media. Yesterday a neuropsychologist came and did tests to see if I was stupid. I ask: what to do to quickly return from the point of view not only physical, but also from the head. I liked the answer: read more, write on social networks. Playing video games. I need to find out if the hospital can get a prescription for PS 5.
Navalny arrived in Berlin two days after falling ill on a plane from Tomsk in Siberia to Moscow. The plane made an emergency landing in Omsk, where it spent two days being treated by local doctors, who said they found no evidence of poisoning. Privately, the doctors told the media that they believed it was poisoning.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said laboratory tests “unequivocally confirmed” that a novichok nerve agent had been used at Navalny. German authorities say French and Swedish labs confirmed their findings. Navalny’s associates say a key piece of evidence was a water bottle that associates recovered from Navalny’s hotel room in Tomsk and handed it over to German doctors, in which traces of novichok were also found. This suggests that he was poisoned before reaching the airport.
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Who is Alexei Navalny?
Alexei Navalny, born in 1976 outside Moscow, is a lawyer-turned-activist whose Anti-Corruption Foundation investigates the wealth of Vladimir Putin’s inner circle.
He started out as a Russian nationalist, but emerged as the main leader of Russia’s democratic opposition during the wave of protests that led to the 2012 presidential elections, and has since been a thorn in the side of the Kremlin.
Navalny is banned from appearing on state television, but has used social media to his advantage. A 2017 documentary accusing Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev of corruption received more than 30 million views on YouTube in two months.
He has been arrested and jailed repeatedly. The European human rights court ruled that Russia violated Navalny’s rights by keeping him under house arrest in 2014. Election officials barred him from running for president in 2018 due to a conviction for embezzlement that he said was politically motivated. Navalny told the commission that his decision would be a vote ‘not against me, but against the 16,000 people who have nominated me; against 200,000 volunteers who have been requesting me. ‘
There has also been a physical price to pay. In April 2017, he was struck with a green tint that nearly blinded him in one eye, and in July 2019 he was taken from jail to hospital with symptoms that one of his doctors said could indicate poisoning. In 2020, he was hospitalized again after suspected poisoning and taken to Germany for treatment. The German government later said that toxicology results showed Navalny was poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent.
Russian authorities have denied any involvement in the incident, alternatively suggesting that Navalny had not been poisoned, or that he may have been poisoned while already in Germany.
The French newspaper Le Monde reported on Tuesday, citing unidentified sources, that Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, told his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, that Navalny was an “internet troublemaker” who may have poisoned himself.
Navalny mocked the claim in an Instagram post. “I cooked novichok in the kitchen, took a sip from the bottle on the plane and fell into a coma,” he wrote. “But Putin surpassed me … In the end, I spent 18 days in a coma like an idiot, but I did not achieve my goal.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Wednesday that Le Monde had misrepresented the call and that its report was “inaccurate”. He said Navalny was free to return to Russia “like any other Russian citizen” and in accordance with the Kremlin convention not to use his name, said he welcomed the news that “the patient is really getting better.”
Navalny, who runs a foundation that exposes corruption among high-ranking officials and was banned from running for president against Putin in 2018, is the most prominent opposition figure in the country. Its associates have been frequently attacked or detained.
It was unclear whether Navalny would return to Russia immediately. Previously, he said that he planned to return as soon as he could. “Other options were never considered,” his spokesman Kira Yarmysh said last week.
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