Putin critic Navalny posts photo with family from hospital bed
● Anti-corruption activist finally able to breathe without using a ventilator
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has posted a picture of himself from his hospital bed in Germany, looking gaunt but joking wryly about his condition and saying that he was enjoying the ability to finally breathe on his own after being poisoned with a nerve agent.
The Instagram post was the first image of the 44-year-old released since he was taken to Berlin’ s Cha rite hospital two days after falling ill on a domestic flight in Russia on 20 August.
“Hi, this is Navalny,” he wrote in the Russian-language post. “I have been missing you. I still can’t do almost anything on my own, but yesterday I managed to breathe on my own for the entire day.”
Navalny had been kept in an induced coma for more than two weeks as he was treated with an antidote before hospital officials said on 7 S ep - tember that his condition had improved enough for him to be brought out of it.
On Monday, the hospital said he had been removed from mechanical ventilation and was able to leave his bed for “short periods of time.”
In the photo, Navalny is being given a hug by his wife Yulia and is flanked by his two children as he sits upright in his bed in a hospital gown, and his statement even had the ring of his well-known sarcastic humour.
“Just on my own, no extra help, I didn’t even use the simplest valve in my throat,” he said of being able to breathe without ventilation. “I liked it very much. It’s a remarkable process that is underestimated by many. Strongly recommended.”
Despite his recovery, doctors have said they cannot rule out long-term health issues associated with the poisoning.
Leonid Volkov, a top associate of Navalny, refused to give any details on his condition or possible plans after his recovery when reached by the Associated Press yesterday.
A German militar y lab has determined that Navalny was poisoned with Novichok, the same class of Soviet-era agent that UK officials said was used on former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury in 2018. On Monday, the German government said independent tests by labs in France and Sweden backed up its findings.
The Hague -based Organi - sation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons also is taking steps to have samples from Navalny tested at its designated labs, Germany has said.
The Kremlin has bristled at calls from German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other leaders to answer questions about the poisoning, denying any official involvement.
French president Emmanuel Macron’s office said he had expressed “deep concern over the criminal act” that targeted Navalny directly with Russian president Vladimir Putin on Monday. The Kremlin said Putin in the call “underlined the impropriety of unfounded accusations against the Russian side” and emphasized Russia’s demand for Germany to hand over analyses and samples.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters yesterday that Russia is puzzled by the German refusal to share Navalny’s analyses and other medical data, or compare notes with the Russian doctors who found no trace of poison in his system while he was at a hospital in the Siberian city of Omsk.
“Russia has been absolutely open for co-operation in determining what happened,” Peskov said. “Russia needs cooperation with the German side in getting the patient’s biological samples to be able to advance.”
Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov, who has canceled a scheduled trip yesterday to Berlin, said Russian authorities have conducted a preliminary inquiry and documented the meetings Navalny had before falling ill, but he emphasised they need to see the evidence of his poisoning to launch a full criminal investigation.