Putin: Navalny May Have Self-Poisoned | Abroad

Navalny, 44, who came out of a coma two weeks ago after falling seriously ill while on a flight in Siberia, derided Putin’s reported claims as illogical. The Russian opposition leader was released from hospital in Berlin on Wednesday. He had been brought there from Russia last month.

Germany says it has evidence that Putin’s fierce critic was poisoned with the nerve poison novichok. That claim is supported by French and Swedish scientists.

The French daily Le Monde reported, citing unnamed sources, that Putin had suggested that Navalny had poisoned himself with novichok for an unspecified reason. In the phone call of the two leaders on Sept. 14, Putin referred to his enemy as an “Internet troublemaker who has also simulated illnesses in the past,” the paper said.

Response Navalny

Navalny reacted ironically to the message in Le Monde. He wrote on Instagram that his “devious plan” was to “cook novichok in the kitchen, drink it quietly on a plane, die in a hospital in Omsk and end up in a morgue in Omsk, where my cause of death would be described as “he has lived enough.”

“But Putin overplayed me,” quipped Navalny. “In the end, I spent 18 days in a coma like an idiot and didn’t get what I wanted.”

In a video address to the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, Macron demanded a “quick and error-free” statement from Russia regarding Navalny’s poisoning, calling the use of chemical weapons a “red line.”

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