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The Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny, who is recovering in Germany after being poisoned with a nerve agent in Russia, has accused Vladimir Putin of being behind the attack, in an interview with a German newspaper.
Navalny’s supporters have frequently maintained that such an attack could only have been ordered at the top levels, though the Kremlin has steadfastly denied any involvement in it.
Navalny, a politician and corruption investigator who is Putin’s fiercest critic, was flown to Germany two days after falling ill on 20 August on a domestic flight in Russia.
He spent 32 days in the hospital, 24 of them in intensive care, before doctors deemed that his condition had improved sufficiently for him to be discharged.
He has posted frequent comments online as his recovery has progressed, but in his first interview since the attack he told Der Spiegel that in his mind “Putin was behind the attack”.
“I don’t have any other versions of how the crime was committed,” he said in a brief excerpt of the interview conducted in Berlin on Wednesday and to be released in full online later on Thursday.
Navalny was initially treated in a hospital in the Siberian city of Omsk, where Russian doctors said they found no trace of any poisoning, before he was transported to Berlin. German chemical weapons experts determined that he had been poisoned with the Soviet-era nerve agent novichok – findings corroborated by labs in France and Sweden.
The nerve agent used in the attack was the same class of poison that Britain said was used on the former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury in 2018. The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, called Navalny’s poisoning an attempted murder and she and other world leaders have demanded that Russia fully investigate the case.
Russia has bristled at the demands for an investigation, saying Germany needs to share medical data in the case or compare notes with Russian doctors. Germany has noted that Russian doctors have their own samples from Navalny since he was in their care for 48 hours.
Germany has enlisted the Hague-based Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons for technical assistance. The agency has collected independent samples from Navalny for testing. The results have not yet been announced.
German doctors have said Navalny could make a full recovery, though they have not ruled out the possibility of long-term damage from the nerve agent.
Der Spiegel said Navalny was joking and alert in the interview but his hands shook so much that it was difficult for him to drink from a bottle of water.
He reiterated what his team has previously said, that he planned on returning to Russia when he was able.
“My job now is to remain the guy who isn’t scared,” he was quoted as saying. “And I’m not scared.”
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