Navalny: ‘I miss you’
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny yesterday said he was breathing normally and missing his supporters, in his first communication with the outside world since his poisoning almost a month ago.
The 44-year-old posted a picture to Instagram from the Berlin hospital where he is being treated.
‘‘Hello, this is Navalny,’’ he wrote in a caption. ‘‘I miss you.’’
He added: ‘‘I can’t really do much but yesterday I was able to breathe on my own all day. Absolutely on my own. I didn’t have any outside help, not even the simplest valve in my throat.
‘‘I enjoyed it very much. It’s an amazing process that it is undervalued by many people. I recommend it.’’
Navalny, Russia’s most outspoken critic of President Vladimir Putin, had been on a ventilator and in a medically induced coma for weeks after falling suddenly ill on a flight from Siberia to Moscow.
In the social media image he
looked thinner than usual but was sitting up in bed in a hospital gown.
His spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh confirmed that Navalny would travel back to Russia once he was able, rather than stay and live in Europe.
‘‘It’s strange to me that anyone could think otherwise,’’ she said.
‘‘No other options have ever been considered.’’
Doctors said earlier this week that Navalny’s condition was improving and he was able to leave his bed for short periods, but did not rule out the possibility of longterm damage to his health.
Navalny’s first public statement comes after several European laboratories independently confirmed the top Kremlin critic had been poisoned with the Soviet-era nerve agent novichok. –