Alexei Navalny said he was grateful to be able to travel to Berlin for treatment (File)
Berlin, Germany:
Russia’s foremost opposition leader Alexei Navalny suddenly felt unwell on a flight over Siberia – a fearful uneasy feeling with cold sweat streaming down his forehead. At first, the crew thought it was food poisoning.
Navalny, in his first media interview since being hospitalized with what Western experts identified as exposure to the Soviet-era nerve agent Novichok, recounted his terrifying near-death experience.
“Maybe 30 minutes have passed since I thought something was wrong until unconsciousness,” Navalny, 44, told German weekly Der Spiegel.
The Kremlin critic was returning to Moscow after campaigning ahead of regional elections in Siberia in August.
“It has been a wonderful day. I am returning home, with an arduous and successful business trip behind me,” he said.
He said he can’t wait to watch an on-the-fly series when something goes wrong.
“And then … it’s hard to describe because there is nothing like it,” he says.
“Organophosphates attack your nervous system like a DDoS attack attacks the computer – it’s overload that breaks you.”
“Talk to me”
A cold sweat started to trickle down his forehead and he asked his spokesperson for a tissue.
“So I tell her, ‘Talk to me. I need to hear a voice – there’s something wrong with me.’ She looks at me like I’m crazy and starts talking. “
He rushed to the bathroom and splashed himself with cold water, sitting up on the toilet seat to steady himself.
“And then I think, ‘If I don’t go out now, I’m never going out.’ The most important feeling was: you don’t feel any pain, but you know you are dying, ”he says.
When he got out, he turned to a flight attendant.
“Instead of asking for help, I say, to my own surprise, ‘I’ve been poisoned. I’m dying.’ And then I lay down on the floor in front of him to die,” Navalny told Spiegel.
“It’s the last thing I see – a face looking at me with slight astonishment and a slight smile. He says, ‘Poisoned? “and by that he probably means I was served bad chicken.”
“Don’t leave us!”
Prostrated on the cabin floor, Navalny said it was clear to him that he likely wouldn’t survive, as the other passengers pleaded with him to hold on.
“Nothing hurts. All I know is I’m dying,” he says.
“Then I heard voices getting softer, a woman calling, ‘Don’t leave us! “. So that was it. I knew I was dead. It wasn’t until later that I realized I was wrong.
When asked about a video that circulated online in the days following his ordeal, claiming to show him “screaming in pain,” Navalny said his agony was very different.
“It was something else, worse. Pain makes you feel like you’re alive. But in this case, you feel: this is the end, ”he says.
Navalny said he was grateful that he was able to travel to Berlin for treatment, saying the move saved his life a second time after the emergency treatment he received in Russia. But he criticized officials who he said succumbed to pressure from Moscow.
“Take the Omsk doctors, for example, who told my wife across the way that I could of course be evacuated by plane, only to then turn around and say that I was not fit for transport,” a- he declared.
“In my opinion, the chief doctor of the Omsk hospital is worse than the secret service agents who kill people. At least for them, killing is their job.”
– ‘Monstrous villains’ –
Navalny said his doctors in Berlin were unsure if he would make a full recovery.
“Basically I’m a bit of a guinea pig. After all, there aren’t many people that you can observe who are still alive after being poisoned with a nerve agent,” he said.
“At some point, I’ll probably be writing in medical journals.”
He said he was really shocked to have been targeted for poisoning and pointed the finger directly at Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“If someone had told me a month and a half ago that I would be poisoned by Novichok, I would have laughed at them,” he said.
“After all, we know how Putin fights the opposition. We have 20 years of experience. You can be arrested, beaten up, sprayed with disinfectant or shot on a bridge like Boris Nemtsov. But chemical warfare agents were considered badass. field of information. services. “
Navalny said he would continue his work in opposition, despite the risks now clearly apparent.
“Not to resist would mean putting everyone at even greater risk in the long run,” he said.
“It’s just like that: we are once again fighting monstrous villains who are ready to commit the most heinous crimes.”
(Except for the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)
