Alexei Navalny Released from Berlin Hospital

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has been discharged from a Berlin hospital where he was being treated for Novichok nerve agent poisoning.

The Charité Hospital in the German capital said it was ending acute medical care because his condition had sufficiently improved.

Alexei Navalny, 44, posted a picture of himself standing unaided with a message saying doctors had given him every chance of a full recovery.

His team alleges he was poisoned on the orders of President Vladimir Putin.

However, the Kremlin strongly denies any involvement.

Alexei Navalny collapsed on a flight in Siberia on August 20. The Russian activist was later transferred to the Charité hospital in Berlin.

A statement from the hospital said that Alexi Navalny had spent 32 days there, including 24 days in intensive care.

“Based on the patient’s progress and current condition, the treating physicians believe that complete recovery is possible. However, it remains too early to gauge the potential long-term effects of his severe poisoning,” it said.

Earlier this month the hospital revealed that Alexei Navalny had begun to recover, saying that he had been removed from a ventilator and could leave his bed.

At the time, the German government said that laboratories in France and Sweden had reconfirmed German tests showing that the poison used on Alexei Navalny was a Novichok agent.

The Kremlin has said there is no proof of that.

Alexei Navalny’s supporters initially believed that his tea had been spiked at Tomsk airport in Siberia before he caught a flight to Moscow. However, they later said that traces of Novichok had been found on a water bottle in the hotel room where he had been staying.

Alexei Navalny became ill during the flight and the plane made an emergency landing in Omsk. Russian officials were persuaded to allow him to be airlifted to Germany two days later.

After tests confirmed poisoning with a Novichok nerve agent, the EU demanded a “transparent” investigation by the Russian government.

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In an Instagram post on September 22, Alexei Navalny rubbished suggestions – purportedly from President Putin – that he had poisoned himself.

French newspaper Le Monde reported that in a telephone call with President Emmanuel Macron on September 14, President Putin had spoken “with contempt about Alexei Navalny, considering him a simple internet troublemaker who had simulated diseases in the past”.

“Putin has outsmarted me,” Alexei Navalny wrote on Instagram, mocking the Russian president.

“He is nobody’s fool. As a result, I, like a fool, spent 18 days in a coma but failed to achieve what I wanted. The provocation has failed!”

A nerve agent from the Novichok group was also used to poison Russian ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury, England in 2018. They both survived, but a local woman, Dawn Sturgess, died after coming into contact with the poison.