Novichok-tinged bottle found in Alexei Navalny’s room: Colleagues

MOSCOW: Aides of Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny said on Thursday that German experts found Novichok nerve agent on a water bottle taken from the hotel room where he stayed before being poisoned. The bottle appears to have been key evidence for Germany’s conclusion that the 44-year-old lawyer and outspoken critic of President Vladimir Putin was poisoned with the military-grade nerve agent.

Specialists from a German military laboratory found traces of Novichok on a bottle of “Holy Spring” water Navalny left in his hotel room in the Siberian city of Tomsk, his spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh said in a video statement.

The discovery “means that Navalny was poisoned before he left the hotel and not in the airport or on the plane,” Yarmysh said.


Navalny collapsed last month on a flight from Tomsk to Moscow after a campaign trip to support opposition candidates in local elections. Previously aides had suggested he had been poisoned by a cup of tea he drank at an airport cafe. The 44-year-old lawyer is being treated in a hospital in Berlin and on Tuesday said he was breathing for the first time without medical support.