A day after the Kremlin critic left the hospital, a statement from Berlin’s Charitable Hospital said on Wednesday that “the patient’s condition had improved enough to be discharged from the inpatient”.
“Alexei Navalny has been receiving treatment in Charita for a total of 32 days, of which 24 days were spent in intensive care,” it said. “Based on the patient’s progress and current condition, the treating physicians believe that complete recovery is possible. However, it is too early to measure the long – term effects of his acute poisoning.”
The Kremlin has vehemently denied any involvement, but there are many questions.
Novichok was used in the March 2018 attack on former Russian spy Sergei Skribal in the English city of Salisbury and has been poisoned by several Russian dissidents in the past.
“Before they let me go to Germany, they took off all my clothes and I was sent there completely naked,” he said in a statement. “Considering that Novichok was found in my body and that a mode of contact with the poison is very possible, my clothes are the most important material evidence.”
Monday’s report coincided with the expiration date of the preliminary investigation into the incident by Russian authorities, which did not lead to a criminal investigation. Navalny’s spokesman, Gir Yarmisch, said the Russian government had been “blind” to the incident.
Last week, Navalny’s aides allegedly took items from his Tomsk hotel room to Germany, where a lab later found traces of a neurotransmitter in the bottles of water he drank.
Navalny’s colleague, Chief Investigator George Alburov, who collected the material in Tomsk, previously told CNN that the water bottle was not necessarily the substance used to poison the Kremlin critic, suggesting that the material could be placed on another object.
“Devoted bacon guru. Award-winning explorer. Internet junkie. Web lover.”