‘Poisoned’ Pussy Riot member flown to Berlin for treatment

A member of Russia’s Pussy Riot protest group has said that a severely ill fellow activist is being taken to Germany for treatment after his suspected poisoning.

Maria Alekhina said that Pyotr Verzilov was being flown to Berlin, but she did not give further details.

Independent news site Meduza reported that Mr Verzilov’s partner, Veronika Nikulshina, said a doctor from a Berlin clinic – who is friends with the ill man’s father – suggested medical care outside Russia.

Mr Verzilov was taken to hospital in Moscow on Tuesday and had remained in intensive care, Pussy Riot members said this week. Ms Alekhina told reporters he regained consciousness on Friday.

She also said she thinks he was poisoned for political reasons.

Mr Verzilov, Ms Nikulshina and two other Pussy Riot members served 15-day jail sentences for running onto the Moscow field where the World Cup final was being played in July.

Their protest of what they described as the excessive powers of Russia’s police briefly disrupted the match with a very large broadcast audience.

Mr Verzilov fell ill as new allegations arose over the March nerve-agent poisoning of a Russian former double agent and his daughter in Salisbury.

Last week the UK named two men – alleged to be agents of Russia’s military intelligence service – in the poisoning of former Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia. The authorities showed surveillance-camera images of the pair in Salisbury.

Several Kremlin opponents have died from poisoning or suspected poisoning during the past 15 years.

Alexander Litvinenko, a former member of Russia’s domestic security service, succumbed slowly in London after ingesting a radioactive isotope in 2006. He fell ill hours after meeting with two Russians whom Britain claimed were the assassins.

Journalist Anna Politkovskaya, a fierce critic of President Vladimir Putin, became sick after drinking tea on an Aeroflot flight in 2004.

She was travelling to southern Russia to try to help negotiate an end to the Beslan crisis in which Chechen militants took hundreds of schoolchildren hostage.

Poison was mentioned as a possible cause of her symptoms. Ms Politkovskaya survived, but was shot and killed in the lift of her Moscow apartment building two years later. 0 Piotr Verzilov – one of four pitch invaders in the World Cup final – en route to be treated for suspected poisoning at a Berlin clinic