Novichok poison found on Navalny hotel water bottle
Traces of the nerve agent used to poison Russian politician Alexei Navalny were found on a water bottle in his hotel room where he stayed before falling ill, his associates said yesterday.
Navalny, President Vladimir Putin’s most prominent critic, spent weeks on a ventilator in a medically induced coma after suddenly falling ill on a flight from Siberia to Moscow last month.
Several European laboratories independently confirmed that he had been poisoned with a Sovietera Novichok nerve agent, previously used in the 2018 Salisbury attack on former Russian spy Sergei Skripal.
Georgy Alburov, one of Navalny’s colleagues who was staying with him in Tomsk, said he and his colleagues persuaded hotel staff to let them sweep his room for clues after hearing he had fallen ill.
He told The Daily Telegraph: ‘‘We realised that Alexei has been poisoned because it could not have been anything else considering his good health and recent government practices in Russia.
‘‘The only thing we could do was to try to preserve the evidence.’’
Among the items carefully packed in plastic bags and sent to Germany where Navalny is being treated were three complementary water bottles.
Lyubov Sobol, one of Navalny’s closest allies, told The Telegraph the evidence pointed to a well-planned Kremlin attack.
‘‘Navalny was constantly followed. There’s no doubt that only Russian intelligence agencies could have organised this poisoning under direct orders or with the knowledge of President -Putin,’’ she said.
The Kremlin denies any involvement in Navalny’s poisoning while Russian police have refused to launch an official inquiry.
The 44-year-old was staying in Tomsk with his team while filming a video for an anticorruption investigation.
He was heading back to Moscow while four of his colleagues stayed behind for another day when he fell unconscious on the plane.
The aircraft made an emergency landing and Navalny was treated in a Siberian hospital for two days before receiving medical clearance to be taken to Germany for specialist care.
Navalny rose to prominence in 2011 when he led massive antigovernment protests against electoral fraud. He has since emerged as a fully fledged opposition leader with a strong following in Moscow and Russian regions.
With two suspended sentences against him, the politician, who won 27 per cent of the vote at the 2013 Moscow mayoral election, was barred from -running for president in 2018 but his campaign against Putin has -galvanised opposition supporters the vast across country.
Most recently, Navalny’s supporters mounted an impressive election campaign, winning a sizeable number of seats in local parliaments previously dominated by the ruling party.
Navalny was brought out of his coma earlier this month and said on Wednesday that he was breathing unaided for the first time in weeks in his first social media post since the poisoning.