On 20 August 2020, Russian opposition leader and anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny was poisoned with the Novichok nerve agent and as a result, he was hospitalized in serious condition. During a flight from Tomsk to Moscow, he became ill and was taken to a hospital in Omsk after an emergency landing. He was then put in a coma. He was evacuated to the Charité hospital in Berlin, Germany, two days later. The use of the nerve agent was confirmed by five Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) certified laboratories. On 7 September, doctors announced that they had taken Navalny out of the induced coma and that his condition had improved. He was discharged from the hospital on 22 September 2020. The OPCW said that a cholinesterase inhibitor from the Novichok group was found in Navalny's blood, urine, skin samples and his water bottle. At the same time, the OPCW report clarified that Navalny was poisoned with a new type of Novichok, which was not included in the list of controlled chemicals of the Chemical Weapons Convention.
Navalny accused President Vladimir Putin of being responsible for his poisoning, but the Kremlin said the accusations were "utterly unfounded" and "insulting". The Kremlin further alleged that Navalny was working for the CIA. The EU and the UK imposed sanctions over Navalny's poisoning on the director of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) Alexander Bortnikov, five other senior Russian officials, and the State Research Institute of Organic Chemistry and Technology (GosNIIOKhT). According to the EU, the poisoning of Navalny became possible "only with the consent of the Presidential Executive Office" and with the participation of the FSB. An investigation by Bellingcat and The Insider implicated agents from the FSB in Navalny's poisoning.
Russian prosecutors refused to open an official criminal investigation of the poisoning, claiming they found no sign that a crime had been committed, and the Kremlin denied involvement in the poisoning of Navalny.
Background
Alexei Navalny had previously been attacked by chemical substances. On 27 April 2017, Navalny was attacked by unknown assailants outside his office in the Anti-Corruption Foundation who sprayed brilliant green dye, possibly mixed with other components, into his face (see Zelyonka attack). He said he had lost 80 percent of the sight in his right eye. He also said that his doctor believed there was a second corrosive substance in the liquid and that "there is hope" the lost eyesight would be restored. He also alleged that the attacker was Aleksandr Petrunko, a man he claimed had ties with State Duma deputy speaker Pyotr Olegovich Tolstoy. Navalny accused the Kremlin of orchestrating the attack.
Another incident occurred in July 2019, when Navalny was arrested and imprisoned. On 28 July, he was hospitalized with severe damage to his eyes and skin. At the hospital, he was diagnosed with an allergic reaction, although this diagnosis was disputed by Anastasia Vasilyeva, one of his personal doctors. Vasilyeva questioned the diagnosis and suggested the possibility that Navalny's condition was the result of "the damaging effects of undetermined chemicals". On 29 July 2019, Navalny was discharged from hospital and taken back to prison, despite the objections of his personal physician who questioned the hospital's motives.
In August 2020, in the days leading up to the poisoning, Navalny had been publishing videos on his YouTube channel in which he expressed support for the pro-democracy 2020 Belarusian protests, which were triggered by the heavily contested 2020 Belarusian presidential election. Navalny had also written that the kind of 'revolution' that was taking place in neighboring Belarus would soon happen in Russia. Local news site Tayga.Info reported that during his Siberia trip, Navalny had been carrying out an investigation, as well as meeting local candidates and volunteers.
When asked if Navalny were preparing an exposé shortly before he became violently ill, Navalny ally Lyubov Sobol stated "I can't reveal all the details, but Navalny was on a work trip. He wasn't relaxing in the regions". The video investigation was later published by Navalny's team on 31 August.
It is assumed that Navalny was poisoned in a politically motivated attack as 'punishment' for his opposition work. According to The New York Times, experts expressed doubts that the Novichok agent would be used by someone other than a state-sponsored agent. Journalist and human rights advocate Anna Politkovskaya, known for her criticism of Putin and her coverage of the Second Chechen War, fell ill during a flight to cover the Beslan school siege in 2004 after drinking tea in an apparent poisoning attempt. She was later assassinated in 2006. In 2018, Pussy Riot activist Pyotr Verzilov was hospitalised in Moscow and later taken to the Charité hospital in Berlin a few days later for treatment which was organised by the Cinema for Peace Foundation after a suspected poisoning, where doctors at the hospital said it was "highly probable" that he was poisoned.
According to activist Ilya Chumakov, who met Navalny along with other supporters the day before his flight, when Navalny was asked why he was not dead, he said that his death would not be beneficial to Putin and that it would turn him into a hero.
Poisoning and treatment
On 20 August 2020, Navalny fell ill during a flight from Tomsk to Moscow and was hospitalised in the City Clinical Emergency Hospital No. 1 in Omsk (Russian: Городская клиническая больница скорой медицинской помощи №1), where the plane had made an emergency landing. The change in his condition on the plane was sudden and violent, and video footage showed crew members on the flight scurrying towards him and Navalny crying loudly.
Afterwards, his spokeswoman said that he was in a coma and on a ventilator in the hospital. She also said that Navalny only drank tea since the morning and that it was suspected that something was added to his drink. The hospital said that he was in a stable but serious condition, and after initially acknowledging that Navalny had probably been poisoned, the hospital's deputy chief physician told reporters that poisoning was "one scenario among many" being considered. Although doctors in Russia initially suggested he suffered from a metabolic disorder caused by low blood sugar, they later stated that he had most likely been poisoned by antipsychotics or neuroleptics and that industrial chemicals such as 2-ethylhexyl diphenyl phosphate were found. A photograph on social media taken by a supporter appeared to show Navalny drinking tea at a Tomsk airport café, where Interfax news agency reported that the owners of the café were checking CCTV footage to see if any evidence could be provided.
By the afternoon, Navalny's wife, Yulia, had reached the hospital from Moscow. She brought with her Navalny's personal doctor, Anastasia Vasilyeva. The authorities, however, initially refused to allow them into the room. They demanded proof in the form of a marriage certificate that Yulia was indeed his wife. A chartered plane paid for by Cinema for Peace Foundation was sent from Germany to evacuate Navalny from Omsk for treatment at the Charité in Berlin. Approximately 31 hours after onset of his symptoms, a doctor from the German team was granted brief access to Alexey Navalny, and recorded bradycardia, hypothermia (34.4°C), and wide pupils non-reactive to light. According to German doctors, Navalny was under sedation with propofol, and it was the only obvious drug given at that time. The doctors treating him in Omsk had initially declared he was too sick to be transported but later released him, and he arrived in Berlin on 22 August. Alexander Murakhovsky, the head doctor at the Omsk hospital, told the press conference on 24 August that they had saved his life and found no traces of any poison in his system; he also said the doctors at the hospital had not been under pressure on the part of Russian officials. The doctors treating him at the Charité announced later in the day that while the specific substance was not yet known, clinical findings indicated poisoning with a substance from the group of nerve agents known as cholinesterase inhibitors, and that they would be performing further tests to discover the exact substance. Evidence might come with the publication of the initiated laboratory testing.
As of 2 September 2020, Navalny was in a medically-induced coma. German physicians said that if he recovered, lasting effects could not be ruled out. Dr. Murakhovsky wrote a letter to the Charité, demanding that they show laboratory data about him being poisoned with a cholinesterase inhibitor, stating the doctors in his hospital found no such evidence. He stated that cholinesterase decrease may have happened either by intake of a compound or naturally, also publishing a purported independent analysis detecting no cholinesterase inhibitors. He confirmed giving him atropine, which is used to counteract certain nerve agents and pesticide poisoning, but claimed the reasons were unrelated to poisoning.
On 7 September, doctors brought Navalny out of the medically-induced coma. In a press release, Charité said:
The condition of Alexei Navalny, ... has improved. The patient has been removed from his medically induced coma and is being weaned off mechanical ventilation. He is responding to verbal stimuli. It remains too early to gauge the potential long-term effects of his severe poisoning.
On 10 September, news media reported the police protection outside the Charité hospital had been stepped up, that Navalny was able to speak again, but Navalny's spokeswoman described reports of his quick recuperation as "exaggerated".
On 14 September, the Charité hospital said that Navalny was taken off the ventilator and that he is able to get out of bed. For the first time, the hospital said that it published the statement following consultations "with the patient and his wife", rather than his wife only.
On 15 September, Navalny's spokeswoman said that Navalny would return to Russia. Navalny also posted a picture from his hospital bed on social media for the first time since his poisoning. The Kremlin ruled out a meeting between Navalny and Putin.
On 22 September, the doctors at the Charité hospital declared him well enough to be discharged from in-patient care.
While recovering after discharge from the Charité hospital, Navalny stated "I assert that Putin was behind the crime, and I have no other explanation for what happened. Only three people can give orders to put into action 'active measures' and use Novichok ... [but] FSB director Alexander Bortnikov, foreign intelligence service head Sergey Naryshkin and the director of GRU cannot make such a decision without Putin's orders."
Investigation
Initial steps taken by Navalny's team members
Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) employees in Tomsk, having learned about the poisoning, told the administration of the hotel where Navalny had stayed that he could have been poisoned with "something from the minibar" and received permission to inspect his room. The inspection was carried out in the presence of a hotel administrator and a lawyer, and was filmed. Navalny's associates took his personal belongings from the room, including several plastic water bottles. The head of the FBK investigation department, Maria Pevchikh, subsequently took these bottles to Germany on the same medical plane on which Navalny himself was transported, and handed them over to German specialists. Although the Navalny's team member maintained control of the bottle, there is no official chain of custody for it.
On the same day, 20 August 2020, Navalny's lawyers appealed to the Investigative Committee of Russia and demanded for the initiation of a criminal case in accordance with the Articles 30, 105, and 227 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.
Upon Navalny's admission to Charité hospital intensive care unit, toxicological analysis and drug screening in the patient's blood and urine samples was performed. Several drugs, including atropin were identified, whose presence was attributed to the previous treatment in Omsk. Cholinesterase status testing was performed in an external laboratory, and it showed virtually no activity of acetylcholinesterase in erythrocytes, which served as a strong evidence supporting exposure to cholinesterase inhibitor. Navalny's attending doctors from the Charité turned to Bundeswehr experts for help to check whether Navalny had been poisoned with a chemical warfare agent.
On 2 September 2020, the German government announced that scientists at the Bundeswehr Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology obtained unequivocal proof that Navalny was poisoned by Novichok type nerve agent. Although the German government did not disclose any technical details about the exact procedure of Novichok's identification, as well as a concrete formula of the poison, Marc-Michael Blum, an expert in chemical weapons testing and former OPCW employee suggested that the analytic procedure used by German chemists was similar to the one used for identification of Sarin poisoning, and it allows reliable identification of the poison at the parts per billion level. His opinion is in agreement with the opinion of Palmer Taylor, a pharmacologist at the University of California, San Diego.
Traces of the Novichok nerve agent were found in blood and urine, as well as on Navalny's skin samples. Traces of the poison were also found on one of Navalny's bottles, which had previously been handed over to Berlin doctors, and on some other undisclosed object(s). Experts suggest that Navalny drank from it after he was poisoned, and left traces on it. Navalny's team suggested that he was possibly poisoned before leaving the hotel. It was also stated that before leaving Russia, Navalny's clothes were seized by the Russian government.