Alexei Navalny fell ill on a domestic flight last month and was treated in a Siberian hospital.
Berlin, Germany:
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny accused President Vladimir Putin of being the cause of his poisoning, in his first published interview since leaving the German hospital where he was treated.
“I claim that Putin is behind this act, I see no other explanation,” he told German weekly Der Spiegel, which published excerpts of the interview on its website on Thursday.
Navalny was evacuated to Berlin for treatment after collapsing in August on a flight from Tomsk to Moscow after a campaign trip to support opposition candidates in local elections.
The Kremlin critic was released just over a week ago and his first press comments came as EU leaders held a summit where the question of a response to Russia could be raised on the case of the critic of the Kremlin.
Germany, which holds the EU presidency, said toxicology tests show he was poisoned by the Soviet-era nerve agent Novichok.
France and Sweden independently corroborated Germany’s findings.
The government of Chancellor Angela Merkel has also warned Moscow of possible sanctions if the case is not fully investigated.
As a sign of the seriousness of his take on the case, the German leader visited Navalny at the Berlin Charite hospital where he was being treated.
The Kremlin has firmly denied the allegations of involvement and accused Western leaders of launching a campaign of disinformation about the opposition leader’s illness.
Instead, he pointed to tests by Russian doctors who first treated Navalny showing no toxic substances.
Long rehabilitation
Navalny was finally released on September 22 after spending 32 days at Charité Hospital in the German capital, including 24 days in intensive care.
The Kremlin critic has been active on social media since coming out of the coma.
Posting a photo of himself sitting on a bench in Berlin, Navalny said on Instagram last week that he was far from fully recovered and would need rehabilitation.
“The plans are always simple: a physiotherapist every day. Maybe a rehabilitation center. Stand on one leg. Take full control of my fingers. Maintain the balance, ”he wrote.
In another blog post, he also said that the three European laboratories had found Novichok “in and on my body”.
He noted that Russia still had not opened an investigation but that it “did not expect anything else”.
The poisoning of Navalny intensified tensions between Russia and the West, especially worsening relations with Germany.
Merkel had always insisted on keeping the channels for dialogue open with Moscow, but she has been sharpening her tone lately, with the Navalny case coming a year after a murder in a central Berlin park that German prosecutors said had been ordered by Russia.
Navalny’s aides said German experts found Novichok on a bottle of water taken from the hotel room he was staying in before he got sick.
The bottle appears to have been key evidence for Germany’s conclusion that President Vladimir Putin’s open lawyer and critic was poisoned with the deadly nerve agent.
Novichok was also used to poison ex-double agent Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, England in 2018. He survived.
(Except for the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)
