Charité doctors publish technical report on the poisoning of Navalny

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Alexei Navalny with his family at the Berlin Charité (September 2020): "His good health status before the poisoning probably helped his recovery"

Photo: Alexei Navalny / ddp media

Doctors from the Berlin Charité have published a medical report on the poisoning of the Kremlin opponent Alexej Navalny in the journal »The Lancet«.

"In the Charité a severe poisoning with a cholinesterase inhibitor was diagnosed," said the clinic.

In the article on four pages, the doctors describe for the first time the symptoms that the Novichok group's neurotoxin developed in Moscow in the 1980s causes.

According to this, Navalny fell into a coma, the heartbeat slowed massively, the body temperature fell to 34.4 and at times to 33.5 degrees Celsius, according to the article, which appeared with the patient's consent.

Russia to this day denies that Navalny was poisoned on August 20 in the Siberian city of Tomsk.

(Read more about the case here.)

To the horror of other colleagues, doctors at the clinic in Omsk only certified the 44-year-old as having a metabolic disorder.

Moscow had repeatedly asked for evidence of poisoning.

The Charité doctors pointed out that they had taken blood and urine samples from Navalny after his arrival on August 22nd.

A Bundeswehr laboratory later found out that the poison was a forbidden agent of the Novichok group.

This has been confirmed by three other laboratories in France, Sweden and the Organization for a Ban on Chemical Weapons (OPCW).

Russia dismisses the allegations as a political campaign.

Navalny was very lucky

The doctors compared the effectiveness of the neurotoxin Novitschok with that of organophosphates, which are used for chemical pest control.

They suspect that Navalny survived because he was treated very quickly after the onset of symptoms - among other things with atropine, which is used as an antidote, and with artificial respiration.

According to the report, Navalny was very lucky that the attack did not turn out any worse.

"His pre-poisoning health was likely to have helped him recover," the doctors noted.

The opposition member blames a command of the domestic secret service FSB for the poison attack, which was carried out under the orders of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The Kremlin rejects this and accuses Navalny of "paranoia".

Germany, on the other hand, holds Russia responsible for the attack.

Russia responded to EU sanctions in the Navalny case with counter-sanctions.

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asa / dpa