The Poisoning of Russian Opposition Leader Alexey Navalny
Navalny was poisoned by a nerve agent from the Novichok group on August 20 in the Siberian city of Tomsk (Photograph by Pavel Golovkin / AP) (Courtesy of the New Yorker)
On August 20, Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny was poisoned with a lethal chemical nerve agent from the Novichok group. He fell ill while on a plane traveling from Siberia to Moscow, according to CNN. The plane made an emergency landing in Omsk, where Navalny was transferred to a hospital. In the hospital, he fell into a coma. Two days later, he was flown to Berlin and admitted to the Charité Hospital, after pleas from both his wife and his supporters to have him taken to Germany.
Navalny is now out of the coma, and is recovering in the Berlin hospital. He is now able to leave his hospital bed for short periods of time and has been taken off a ventilator, according to the Guardian. However, he is still unable to pour himself a glass of water or use his phone properly.
Traces of the Novichok nerve agent were found on a bottle of water in the hotel room in the Siberian city of Tomsk, where Navalny had stayed before falling ill, according to CNN. However, it is suspected that the nerve agent might have been placed on his clothes, rather than a water bottle, as his clothes had been taken from him before he went to Berlin.
Many are suspecting that the Russian government is responsible for the poisoning of Navalny, as few scientists outside of Russia have much experience with Novichok nerve agents, according to CNN. In addition, no other countries besides Russia are known to have developed nerve agents in the Novichok group and its existence had been kept a secret by the Soviet Union until the mid-1990s, when Soviet scientists and whistle-blower Vil Mirzayanov revealed information about the production of the nerve agent.
In a report by BBC News, Navalny, an open critic of the Russian government and Russian President Vladimir Putin, has been jailed and imprisoned before for attending protests and other demonstrations against the Russian government.
According to CBS News, Mirzayanov, who was a contributor in the Soviet program made to develop the Novichok nerve agent has apologized to Navalny and predicts that the Russian opposition leader’s recovery will take almost a year.
Update: Navalny was released from the Berlin hospital on September 23, according to the New York Times. He is planning to return to Russia and persist in opposing the Russian government after finishing rehabilitation in Germany.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/06/world/europe/navalny-opcw-russia-novichok.html
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-16057045
https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/17/europe/navalny-novichok-poisoned-water-intl/index.html
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/14/alexei-navalny-continues-to-improve-say-german-doctors
https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/19/europe/navalny-recovery-staircase-post-intl/index.html
https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/02/europe/alexey-navalny-novichok-intl/index.html