Alexei Navalny pictured walking down stairs as he recovers from novichok poisoning
19 September 2020, 13:01 | Updated: 19 September 2020, 15:00
Alexei Navalny has been pictured walking down stairs in hospital as he continues to recover from being poisoned with novichok.
The Putin critic said in an Instagram post that he still finds it difficult to climb stairs because his "legs tremble" but he is on the path to recovery.
Mr Navalny, who is being treated in a German hospital after being taken ill during a flight on 20 August, said his recovery is will be "clear, although long".
On Thursday, a member of his entourage said they believe he was poisoned via a water bottle in his hotel room.
Two laboratories in France and Sweden have confirmed that the politician was poised with novichok. This claim was also supported by German findings.
Novichok was also used in the Salisbury attack on ex-Russian spy Sergei Skripal.
German chancellor Angela Merkel said the use of the chemical weapon showed the "dangerous" attack on Mr Navalny was attempted murder and the aim was to silence him.
"Russia will lie and lie and lie" - MP on Alexei Navalny poisoning
Mr Navalny said in the Instagram update he "could not use his phone" and has "difficulties trying to pour water into his
glass."
"Although I understood in general what the doctor wanted, I did not understand where to get the words. In what part of the head do they appear in?
"I also did not know how to express my despair and, therefore, simply kept silent.
"Now I'm a guy whose legs are shaking when he walks up the stairs, but he thinks: 'Oh, this is a staircase! They go up it. Perhaps we should look for an elevator,'" Mr Navalny said.
"And before, I would have just stood there and stared."
The doctors treating him at Berlin's Charite hospital "turned me from a 'technically alive person' into someone who has every chance to become the Highest Form of Being in Modern Society again - a person who can quickly scroll through Instagram and without hesitation understands where to put likes," he wrote.
Merkel: Russian poisoning of Navalny is attempted murder
The Kremlin has repeatedly said that before Mr Navalny's transfer to Berlin, Russian labs and a hospital in the Siberian city of Omsk found no sign of a poisoning.
Moscow has urged Germany to provide its evidence, and bristled at calls from German chancellor Angela Merkel and other western leaders for answers about what happened to Mr Navalny.
"There is too much absurdity in this case to take anyone at their word," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday.
Mr Peskov also accused Mr Navalny's colleagues of hampering a Russian investigation by taking items from his hotel room out of the country, including the water bottle they claimed had traces of the nerve agent.
Mr Navalny's colleagues said that they removed the bottle and other items from the hotel room in the Siberian city of Tomsk Siberia and brought them to Germany as potential evidence. because they did not trust Russian authorities to conduct a proper probe.
