Alexei Navalny: Russian opposition leader poisoned with Novichok – Germany

Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny was poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent, says the German government.

He said toxicology tests in a military laboratory showed “unequivocal evidence” from a Novichok agent.

Navalny was flown to Berlin for treatment after falling ill during a flight in Russia’s Siberia region last month. He has been in a coma ever since.

His team says he was poisoned on the orders of President Vladimir Putin. The Kremlin has rejected the accusation.

The German government said it condemned the attack in the strongest terms and asked Russia to provide an urgent explanation.

“It is a disturbing fact that Alexei Navalny was the victim of a chemical nerve agent in Russia,” he said.

Chancellor Angela Merkel has met with high-level ministers to discuss next steps, according to the statement.

The Kremlin said it had not received any information from Germany that Navalny had been poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent, Russia’s Tass news agency reported.

The German government said it would inform the EU-NATO military alliance of its findings.

“[The federal government] will discuss an appropriate joint response with partners in light of the Russian response, “he said.

Navalny’s wife, Yulia Navalnaya, and the Russian ambassador to Germany would also be informed of the findings, according to the statement.

Mr. Navalny fell ill on a flight from Tomsk to Moscow. His supporters suspect that poison was placed in a teacup at Tomsk airport.

The flight of the prominent Putin critic was diverted to Omsk, where doctors treated him for three days before he was transferred to the Charité hospital in Berlin.

The Kremlin says that Russian doctors administered atropine, which can be used to treat the effects of nerve agents, but found no evidence of poisoning.

Ms Navalnaya said she feared that Russian doctors had delayed her transfer as authorities were trying to wait for evidence of any chemicals to disappear.

Doctors at Charité hospital have said that his condition is serious but not life-threatening.

The name Novichok means “newcomer” in Russian and is applied to a group of advanced nerve agents developed by the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s.

Novichok agents have similar effects to other nerve agents: they work by blocking messages from the nerves to the muscles, causing the collapse of many bodily functions.

While some Novichok agents are liquid, others are believed to exist in solid form. This means that they can be dispersed as an ultra-fine powder.

Novichoks were designed to be more toxic than other chemical weapons, so some versions start to take effect quickly, on the order of 30 seconds to two minutes.

In 2018, a former Russian spy, his daughter and a couple were poisoned by a Novichok agent in the British city of Salisbury. It is alleged that the Russian suspects identified in the case smeared the nerve agent on the door handle of Sergei Skripal’s home.

The attack left Mr. Skripal and his daughter Yulia seriously ill. Dawn Sturgess, 44, was later exposed to the same nerve agent and died in hospital.

Navalny is an anti-corruption activist who has led protests across the country against the Russian authorities. He has called Putin’s party a place of “scammers and thieves” that is “sucking the blood of Russia.”

However, he has been banned from opposing Putin in the elections due to a conviction for embezzlement. He denies the crime and says his legal problems are retaliation from the Kremlin for his fierce criticism.

There have been a number of previous attacks on critics or high-profile opponents of President Putin, including politicians, intelligence officials and journalists. The Kremlin has always denied its involvement.