Claims Novichok nerve agent found in Navalny hotel water

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s colleagues have claimed a bottle of water with a trace of the Novichok nerve agent was found in his hotel room after his poisoning.

Mr Navalny fell ill on a flight from Siberia to Moscow on 20 August and was flown to Germany. He was kept in an induced coma in a Berlin hospital for more than two weeks as he was treated with an antidote.

Members of his team accused the Kremlin of involvement in the poisoning, charges Russian officials have vehemently denied.

The Kremlin has bristled at calls from German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other leaders to answer questions about the poisoning, urging Germany to provide evidence of it.

On Tuesday, he posted a picture of himself from his hospital bed, hugged by his wife and children. A video posted on Mr Navalny’ s Instagram on Thursday showed his team working around his hotel room in Tomsk before he left the city and collapsed on a flight back to Moscow.

Mr Navalny’s Instagram said they returned to the room an hour after learning he had become ill and packed the bottles and other items for further inspection.

“Two weeks later, a German lab orator y found a trace of Novichok on a bottle from the Tomsk hotel room,” they said.

A German military lab has determined Mr Navalny was poisoned with No vic hok, the same class of Soviet-era agent the UK 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 is also taking steps to have samples from Mr Navalny tested at its designated labs, Germany has said.

The Kremlin has said Russian doctors who treated him in the Siberian city of Omsk, where he was brought after the plane’s emergency landing, found no sign Mr Navalny was poisoned.

Russia has repeatedly prodded Germany to share Mr Navalny’s analyses and other medical data, and to compare notes with the Russian doctors.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who cancelled a scheduled trip to Berlin on Tuesday, said in a TV interview earlier this week that Russian authorities have conducted a preliminary inquiry and documented the meetings Mr Navalny had before falling ill.

He emphasise din v es ti gators need to see the evidence of his poisoning to launch a full criminal probe and accused the West of trying to smear Russia and use the incident as a pretext for new sanctions against Moscow.