German doctors confirm Navalny's poisoning

Studies conducted by doctors at the German clinic Charité point to the poisoning of Alexei Navalny with a substance from the group of active ingredients of cholinesterase inhibitors, said the clinic . The specific substance has not yet been identified, another extensive analysis is being carried out, but the oppositionist's associates have already suspected similarities with the poisoning of the Skripals in 2018.

The toxic effect of the substance found in Navalny's body has been confirmed by several independent laboratories, according to Charité. Now the politician is being treated with the antidote atropine.

• Atropine is also used to treat patients after Novichok nerve agent poisoning. In 2018, according to the British authorities, former GRU colonel Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned in Salisbury with this substance.
• “The world’s most famous cholinesterase inhibitor is called Novichok,” wrote Navalny’s associate Leonid Volkov on Twitter.
• Cholinesterase inhibitors treat diseases such as Alzheimer's, but at high doses they can act as nerve agents (NS), chemist Vladimir Uglev told Interfax.
• Cholinesterase is an enzyme that breaks down the protein acetylcholine, which is a neurotransmitter, Igor Nikulin, a former member of the UN biological weapons commission, explained to The Bell. “If there is a lot of this protein, if this enzyme is blocked with some kind of inhibitor, then a person has convulsions, constriction of the pupils, dizziness, nausea, salivation, that is, in principle, the same symptoms as when using any organophosphorus. I think that he [Navalny] most likely got poisoned by some kind of medical drug, maybe in combination with alcohol. This gives the same picture in principle. It is unlikely that he was poisoned with such a particularly dangerous chemical warfare agent. I think that everything is simpler here: either some kind of medication, maybe he takes it, or an overdose. Then the same symptoms will be, as with organophosphorus poisoning, ”said Nikulin.

Navalny is still in an artificial coma, his condition is serious, but there is no immediate threat to life, the Charité said. Doctors do not rule out long-term consequences of poisoning for the oppositionist's nervous system.

The clinic also noted that Navalny's attending physicians are in close contact with his wife, Yulia, and, in agreement with her, believe that informing the public about his condition is in his own interests.

• Omsk doctors, to whom Navalny was admitted in an unconscious state on August 20 after a sharp deterioration in health on board the plane from Tomsk to Moscow, did not find poisons in the analyzes of the oppositionist. “The diagnosis of poisoning remains in the subcortex of our consciousness, but we do not believe that the patient suffered poisoning,” said Anatoly Kalinichenko, deputy chief physician of the Omsk emergency hospital No. 1, on August 21.
• “The diagnosis to which we are now most inclined is a violation of the carbohydrate balance, that is, a metabolic disorder. This can be caused by a sharp drop in blood sugar, which caused a loss of consciousness, ” said the head physician of the Omsk hospital Alexander Murakhovsky on the same day.
• After Charite's statement about Navalny's intoxication with a certain substance from the group of cholinesterase inhibitors, the chief toxicologist of the Omsk region and the Siberian Federal District, Alexander Sabaev, told RIA Novosti that when he was admitted to the Omsk hospital, the politician did not have a clinical picture characteristic of such poisoning. Boris Teplykh, head of the Department of Anesthesiology and Resuscitation No. 1 of the Pirogov Center, added that the version of Navalny's poisoning was considered, but did not find confirmation. German doctors, according to Teplykh, are talking about clinical data, and not about the substance itself, which has not yet been discovered by anyone.

• Negotiations on Navalny's transportation to Germany went on all day on Friday, August 21, and ended only in the evening, when doctors allowed the transportation under the responsibility of the politician's wife Yulia. Navalny's associates were sure that the Omsk doctors received instructions from above that he should not be sent to Germany in order to "cover his tracks" and hide the cause of his poisoning. The plane eventually took off from Omsk and landed at Berlin Schönefeld Airport on 22 August.

• Alexei Navalny will survive and recover from the poisoning, but he will not be able to work as a politician for at least a few months, said in an interview with Bild. Yaka Bizil, founder of the Cinema for Peace Navalny Fund that organized the transfer,