‘Navalny can talk again and gets extra police surveillance in a German hospital’ | NOW

Poisoned Russian opposition member Alexei Navalny is able to speak again. According to his doctors, his condition is slowly improving, the German report The mirror and the journalistic platform Bellingcat Thursday. On Monday, Navalny was brought out of an artificial coma.

As his condition is improving, it is feared that more people will want to visit him. That is why the German authorities are said to have decided to increase the police surveillance of the 44-year-old opposition member.

According to The mirror Navalny can remember certain events surrounding his poisoning. “His statements could potentially be dangerous to those behind the attack,” the magazine said.

The Berlin hospital did not want to respond to the news of the magazine on Thursday Bellingcat. Navalny’s spokesperson Kira Yarmysh writes Twitter that his condition is indeed improving, but that other claims from the article of The mirror be exaggerated. It is unclear what she is referring to.

Opposition member suddenly became seriously ill

Navalny fell seriously ill during a domestic flight in Russia on August 20. Because of a possible poisoning, his supporters insisted that the opposition member should be treated elsewhere. The Russian authorities subsequently authorized treatment in Germany.

Navalny fiercely opposes Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Russian elite. He published dozens of studies with his organization in which he accuses high-ranking Russians of corruption.

The opposition member is currently being treated in Berlin’s Charité hospital. Doctors at that hospital announced last week that Navalny had been poisoned with novitchok, a nerve poison that was also used in 2018 in the poisoning of Russian ex-double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter.

Tensions between Russia and the West have risen

The possible poisoning of Navalny has put relations between Russia and the West again on edge. Germany, among others, accuses Russia of being behind the attack. German opposition members have called on the German government to halt construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, although it is already over 95 percent completed. An end to that billion dollar project would hit the Russian government considerably.

NATO member states last week demanded that Russia cooperate in an investigation by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) into the poisoning of Navalny.

Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte left to the Italian newspaper on Thursday The paper know that Putin had promised to come up with an investigation. However, this was later denied by the Kremlin. Russia also previously denied that there had been a crime against the opposition member and said therefore no investigation could be launched.

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