9/7/20
The German hospital treating Aleksei Navalny says the Russian opposition leader’s condition "has improved" and he is "responding to verbal stimuli." Berlin’s Charite hospital said in a statement on September 7 that the 44-year-old has been "removed from his medically induced coma" and "is being weaned off mechanical ventilation." However, the hospital also said that it remains "too early to gauge the potential long-term effects of his severe poisoning." Navalny, an anti-corruption campaigner who has led nationwide protests against Russian President Vladimir Putin, was flown to Germany on August 22, two days after falling ill on a flight in Siberia. German experts say tests show that he was poisoned with a Soviet-style military-grade nerve agent from the Novichok group, prompting the European Union, Germany, the United States, and other countries to demand that Russia investigate the case. Britain's Foreign Minister Dominic Raab on September 7 said he had summoned Russia's ambassador to London to "register deep concern about the poisoning." "It's completely unacceptable that a banned chemical weapon has been used and Russia must hold a full, transparent investigation," Raab tweeted.
Russian authorities have refused to open a criminal investigation, saying that no hard evidence of poisoning has been found. Germany has signaled that Berlin would push for new sanctions against Russia if Moscow fails to explain the poisoning of the Kremlin foe, including a possible shift in German policy regarding the nearly complete Baltic Sea pipeline known as Nord Stream 2, which would bring gas from Russia to Germany. Merkel has been under pressure from the United States and other Western countries to scrap the plan. Sobol believes the Kremlin would want to poison Navalny because of his Smart Voting campaign that supports independent and opposition candidates in municipal elections later in September. She added that a wave of instability sparked by protests stretching from Belarus, on Russia's western border, to the Far Eastern region of the Khabarovsk Krai, have also unsettled Russia's leadership.
