Putin enemy’s first steps since novichok attack
KREMLIN critic Alexei Navalny revealed yesterday that he is now able to walk and talk again after his near-fatal novichok poisoning.
The Russian opposition politician is still unable to use his phone or hold a glass of water but said he is on a ‘clear road’ to recovery as he posted a picture of himself walking down a staircase in a German hospital.
He told followers he is regaining his physical and mental capacity, posting on Instagram: ‘Quite recently, I did not recognise people and did not understand how to talk. This drove me to despair.
‘There are many problems yet to be solved but amazing doctors from the Charité hospital have solved the main one,’ he added, referring to the Berlin centre where he is being treated. ‘They turned me from a “technically alive human being” into someone who has high chances to become… a man who can quickly scroll Instagram and understand without thinking where to put his likes.’
His post came as Putin supporters in the Russian media stepped up a ‘dirty tricks’ campaign linking a longstanding British-based ally of Navalny’s to the novichok attack.
Maria Pevchikh, 33, a former London School of Economics student and longtime resident in the capital, was in the Siberian city of Tomsk where Navalny was poisoned with the deadly nerve agent. She later flew in the air ambulance that took him to Berlin for life-saving treatment.
After Navalny, 44, collapsed on August 20 while on a scheduled flight from Tomsk to Moscow, tests revealed he had been poisoned with the same nerve agent used against Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury in 2018.
As the outcry over the poisoning grew, pro-Kremlin TV channel NTV aired a report claiming Pevchikh’s scientist father Konstantin was the ‘inventor of special needles that allow a substance to be injected into the body without going through the bloodstream’.
Without providing any evidence, another outlet, Life, alleged Pevchikh had access to his hotel bedroom and hinted that the poison could even have been sprinkled on his socks or underwear. Meanwhile pro-Putin website Nation News alleged she could have links to British intelligence.
Navalny’s allies claim Putin-friendly media are targeting Pevchikh in a ‘sinister campaign’ to deflect the suggestion that Russia’s secret services targeted him with novichok.