Russian doctors deny German hospital’s claim of opp. figure Navalny’s poisoning

Russian doctors say tests on opposition figure Alexey Navalny’s found no traces of intoxication with substances from the group of cholinesterase inhibitors, dismissing the claim by a German hospital where he has been admitted.

Charite Hospital in Berlin, where Navalny was recently hospitalized, said in a statement on Monday that clinical findings indicated he had been poisoned with a substance from the group of cholinesterase inhibitors. It said the specific substance remained unknown.

The 44-year-old Russian opposition figure was taken to Germany for medical treatment on Saturday. He had been taken to a hospital in Russia’s Siberian city of Omsk after collapsing during a domestic flight from the city to the Russian capital of Moscow on Thursday. His plane had been forced to make an emergency landing due to the sudden deterioration in his health.

Later on Monday, Omsk Chief Toxicologist Alexander Sabayev said tests on Navalny’s blood samples at the Omsk hospital showed no traces of poisoning with cholinesterase inhibitors and that he did not have symptoms typical of such poisoning.

“Upon his admission to the [Omsk] hospital, Alexey Navalny was tested on a wide range of narcotics, synthetic substances, psychodiletics, and medicinal substances, including cholinesterase inhibitors — all tests came back negative,” the Omsk Ministry of Health quoted Sabayev as saying in a press statement.

“As we said earlier, we are ready to share Alexey Navalny’s samples with our German colleagues for examination,” Sabayev said.

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EU, Germany call for Russian investigation

Following Charite Hospital’s statement, High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs Josep Borrell urged “the Russian authorities [to] initiate an independent and transparent investigation on the poisoning of Mr. Navalny without delay.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Foreign Minister Heiko Maas in a joint statement on Monday also called on Moscow to conduct a comprehensive inquiry into the case.

“According to the Charite medical team, the clinical examination indicates that Alexey Navalny was poisoned. Given Navalny’s prominent role in the political opposition, local authorities are urged to ensure that this incident is clarified fully and in full transparency,” the German officials said in the statement. “Those responsible must be probed and held accountable.”

The head of the anesthesiology and reanimation department at Russia’s Pirogov Center, Boris Teplykh, also dismissed Charite Hospital’s statement.

“Well, firstly, they speak about clinical data, and not about the substance itself, which neither we nor, apparently, they have discovered at the moment. The same version was worked out by us on the first day of the patient’s admission, but no confirmation was found,” Teplykh said.

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