Soviet-era nerve agent Novichok used on Russia’s Alexei Navalny, Germany says

Navalny, one of President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest critics, fell ill on a flight from Siberia back to Moscow on August 20

Novichok, a Soviet-era nerve agent, was also used to poison former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Britain in 2018

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Russian opposition leader and anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny, centre, pictured in February. Photo: EPA

Published: 11:25pm, 2 Sep 2020Updated: 4:37am, 3 Sep 2020

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was poisoned with the same type of Soviet-era nerve agent that British authorities identified in a 2018 attack on a former Russian spy, the German government said Wednesday, citing new test results.

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman, Steffen Seibert, said in a statement that testing by a special German military laboratory had now shown “proof without doubt of a chemical nerve agent from the Novichok group”.

Navalny, a politician and corruption investigator who is one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest critics, fell ill on a flight back to Moscow from Siberia on Aug 20 and was taken to a hospital in the Siberian city of Omsk after the plane made an emergency landing.

He was transferred two days later to Berlin’s Charite hospital, where doctors last week said there were indications that he had been poisoned.

Army officers remove the bench where Sergi Skripal and his daughter were found after being poisoned in Salisbury, Britain, in 2018. Photo: EPA

British authorities identified Novichok as the poison used in 2018 on former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in England. The nerve agent is a cholinesterase inhibitor, part of the class of substances that doctors at the Charite initially identified in Navalny.