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Putin critic Alexei Navalny poisoned with nerve agent, show tests done by German hospital, condition serious

Alexei Navalny looks to have joined a long line of Russian dissidents who have found a target painted on their backs over their opposition to the government

Tests conducted at a German hospital where prominent Putin critic Alexei Navalny is now receiving treatment have confirmed what his supporters have been saying this entire time: that he was poisoned.

Navalny, 44, had been taking a flight from Tomsk, Siberia, to Moscow on Thursday when he suddenly began screaming in agony and lost consciousness, with witnesses capturing the incident on their phones. The pilots were forced to make an emergency landing in Omsk and Navalny was stretchered from the plane into a waiting ambulance that transported him to the city's Hospital No. 1.

While doctors in the city initially refused to let Navalny's family transport him to Germany, he was evacuated to Berlin's Charité hospital on Saturday, August 22, following a direct plea from his wife to Russian President Vladimir Putin. The hospital has now revealed that their tests indicate he was a victim of poisoning.

In a statement obtained by the Guardian, the hospital did not identify the specific poison responsible for Navalny's illness -- he is believed to have been put into an "artificial coma" to stop "very deep convulsions" -- but said the substance was part of a group that affects the central nervous system, and includes nerve agents and pesticides. They said he had fallen ill because of a cholinesterase inhibitor but that the specific substance was not known and analysis was ongoing.

"The outcome of the disease remains uncertain and long-term consequences, especially in the area of the nervous system, cannot be ruled out at this point in time," the clinic shared, adding that he is in a serious condition but "there is currently no acute danger to his life."

The confirmation will mean Navalny joins a long line of Russian dissidents who have found themselves with a target on their backs over their criticism of the government in recent times. The attack on Navalny has drawn comparisons to the most recent one, the 2018 poisoning of Sergei Skripal, a former officer with Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency, because they may have involved the same poison. "The world’s most famous cholinesterase inhibitor is called novichok," said Leonid Volkov, an ally of the 44-year-old.

"We’ve said that Alexei was poisoned from the very beginning despite the statements from the Omsk doctors and government propagandists," said Kira Yarmysh, a spokeswoman for Navalny, in a tweet. "Now our words have been confirmed by analyses by an independent laboratory. Navalny’s poisoning is not a hypothesis, it is a fact.”

"Separately, I want to say it again: the ambulance doctors told me that Alexei has 'toxic poisoning,'" she added. "This was not my guess. That is, the very first doctor who saw Alexei made the following conclusion. All the following days, the head doctor of the Omsk hospital just fooled everyone."

Yarmysh was referring to the diagnosis of Navalny's doctors in Omsk who said he had not been poisoned and that his condition was explained by a metabolic disease caused by low blood sugar. However, that had been called into question by suggestions that the doctors were under government pressure to cover up any evidence of an attack against such a prominent critic because of how it would look on the global stage.

While the Kremlin has still not officially made any statement about these new findings, the damage appears to have been done. The German government has said that Navalny needs police protection because of a "certain likelihood" he was poisoned. "Because one can assume with a certain likelihood that we are dealing with a poison attack, protection is essential," said Steffen Seibert, the spokesman for the German chancellor, Angela Merkel. "The suspicion is not that Mr. Navalny poisoned himself but that someone poisoned Mr. Navalny, and there are unfortunately one or two examples of such poisonings in recent Russian history."