Poisoning of Alexei Navalny cause chemical warfare
Investigation by German authorities
Upon Navalny's admission to Charité hospital intensive care unit, toxicological analysis and drug screening in the patient's blood and urine samples was performed. Several drugs, including atropin were identified, whose presence was attributed to the previous treatment in Omsk. Cholinesterase status testing was performed in an external laboratory, and it showed virtually no activity of acetylcholinesterase in erythrocytes, which served as a strong evidence supporting exposure to cholinesterase inhibitor. Navalny's attending doctors from the Charité turned to Bundeswehr experts for help to check whether Navalny had been poisoned with a chemical warfare agent.On 2nd of September, 2020, the German government announced that scientists at the Bundeswehr Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology obtained in unequivocal proof that Navalny was poisoned by Novichok type nerve agent Although the German government did not disclose any technical details about the exact procedure of Novichok's identification, as well as a concrete formula of the poison, Marc-Michael Blum, an expert in chemical weapons testing and former OPCW employee suggested that the alanytic procedure used by German chemists was similar to the one used for identification of Sarin poisoning, and it allows reliable identification of the poison at the ppb level. His opinion is in agreement with the opinion of Palmer Taylor, a pharmacologist at the University of California, San Diego.Traces of the Novichok nerve agent were found in blood and urine, as well as on Navalny's skin samples. Traces of the poison were also found on one of Navalny's bottles, which had previously been handed over to Berlin doctors, and on some other undisclosed object(s). Experts suggest that Navalny drank from it after he was poisoned, and left traces on it. Navalny's team suggested that he was possibly poisoned before leaving the hotel. It was also stated that before leaving Russia, Navalny's clothes were seized by the Russian government.Bruno Kahl, the head of Germany's foreign intelligence service, revealed that the Novichok agent identified from Navalny's toxicology results was a "harder" form than previously seen, suggesting it was a different compound from that used to poison the Skripals.The research results from the Bundeswehr Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology were handed over to the OPCW.The Charité hospital, with Navalny's consent, published a scientific article titled "Novichok nerve agent poisoning" in the peer-reviewed medical journal The Lancet. In the article, 14 doctors described Navalny's clinical details and course of treatment. The doctors also confirmed that severe poisoning was the cause of Navalny's condition: "A laboratory of the German armed forces designated by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons identified an organophosphorus nerve agent from the Novichok group in blood samples collected immediately after the patient's admission to Charité." They also expressed the opinion that Navalny survived thanks to timely treatment and previous good health. After the publication, Navalny said that the evidence of the poisoning that Putin was demanding was now available to the whole world.