NAVALNY POISONED WITH DEADLIER NOVICHOK VARIANT: GERMAN MEDIA

Leading Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny was poisoned with a new, deadlier variant of military-grade nerve agent Novichok, the German weekly Die Zeit reported Wednesday.

Hours after the Die Zeit report, The Insider news website reported, citing anonymous sources, that Navalny, 44, has almost completely recovered after falling violently ill on a flight in Siberia on Aug. 20 and remaining in a coma for more than two weeks. He was evacuated to a Berlin hospital after Siberian doctors ruled out poisoning as the cause of his illness. At least two scientists involved in Novichok’s development have hypothesized that Navalny may have been poisoned with a different type of Novichok than that used in 2018 on former spy Sergei Skripal in Britain, Moscow Times also reported on September 10, 2020.

“Navalny was poisoned with a novel development of the chemical weapon Novichok — a variant that the world had not known until this attack, but which is said to be more vicious and deadly than all known offshoots of the Novichok family,” Die Zeit reported. Only the Russian intelligence services could have carried out “an operation with such a lethal and complex poison,” Die Zeit reported, citing German intelligence.

Germany said last week that “unequivocal evidence” pointed to Navalny, the de facto leader of Russia’s opposition, being poisoned by a nerve agent from the Novichok family. Chancellor Angela Merkel has said that “only Russia can and must answer” questions regarding Navalny’s poisoning.

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