Poisoning of Alexei Navalny
On 20 August 2020, Russian opposition figure and anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny was poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent and was hospitalized in serious condition. During a flight from Tomsk to Moscow, he became ill and was taken to a hospital in Omsk after an emergency landing there, and put in a coma. He was evacuated to the Charité hospital in Berlin, Germany, two days later. The use of the nerve agent was confirmed by five Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) certified laboratories. On 7 September, doctors announced that they had taken Navalny out of the induced coma and that his condition had improved. He was discharged from the hospital on 22 September 2020. The OPCW said that a cholinesterase inhibitor from the Novichok group was found in Navalny's blood, urine, skin samples and his water bottle. At the same time, the OPCW report clarified that Navalny was poisoned with a new type of Novichok, which was not included in the list of controlled chemicals of the Chemical Weapons Convention.
| Poisoning of Alexei Navalny | |
|---|---|
| Location | Xander Hotel, Tomsk, Russia (presumed) |
| Date | 20 August 2020 (UTC+7) |
| Target | Alexei Navalny |
Attack type | Poisoning |
| Weapons | Novichok agent |
| Deaths | 0 |
| Injured | 1 |
| Accused | Federal Security Service |
Other prominent Russians, especially those critical of the Russian government, have suffered poisoning attacks in the last two decades. Navalny accused President Vladimir Putin of being responsible for his poisoning. The EU and the UK imposed sanctions over Navalny's poisoning on the director of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) Alexander Bortnikov, five other senior Russian officials, and the State Research Institute of Organic Chemistry and Technology (GosNIIOKhT). According to the EU, the poisoning of Navalny became possible "only with the consent of the Presidential Executive Office" and with the participation of the FSB. An investigation by Bellingcat and The Insider implicated agents from the FSB in Navalny's poisoning.
Russian prosecutors refused to open an official criminal investigation of the poisoning, claiming they found no sign that a crime had been committed, and the Kremlin denied involvement in the poisoning of Navalny.
On 17 January 2021, Navalny returned to Russia from Germany and was detained at Sheremetyevo International Airport for violating the terms of his probation. On 2 February, his suspended sentence was replaced with a prison sentence of around two and a half years.