Russian Opposition Leader Alexei Navalny Out Of Coma
Russian dissident, Alexei Navalny has improved and is now being weaned off mechanical ventilation.
Charite hospital, which has been treating him since he was airlifted to Germany after falling ill on a Russian domestic flight last month gave the update Monday.
“It remains too early to gauge the potential long-term effects of his severe poisoning,” Charite said in a statement.
Navalny, a prominent critic of President Vladimir Putin, was airlifted to Germany last month after collapsing on a flight from the Siberian city of Tomsk to Moscow.
It made an emergency landing in Omsk so that Navalny could be stretchered off.
Chancellor Angela Merkel has said her government has concluded Navalny, 44, was poisoned with Novichok, the same substance that Britain said was used against a Russian double agent and his daughter in an attack in England in 2018.
Novichok is a deadly group of nerve agents developed by the Soviet military in the 1970s and 1980s.
The incident has put the future of Germany’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline with Russia in doubt as a growing number of politicians call for support for the project to be withdrawn unless Russia helps to clear up the circumstances around Navalny’s poisioning.
Merkel’s spokesman said on Monday she does not rule out imposing sanctions on the pipeline in response to the suspected poisoning.
Meanwhile, Britain’s foreign Minister Dominic Raab said he had summoned Russia’s ambassador to the UK to express his concern at the poisoning of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny.
“Today the UK summoned Russia’s Ambassador to the UK to register deep concern about the poisoning of Alexey @navalny,” Raab said on Twitter.
“It’s completely unacceptable that a banned chemical weapon has been used and Russia must hold a full, transparent investigation.”
Raab added that he was relieved to hear Navalny had been taken out of his medically-induced coma.
