On Thursday, the Russian opposition party announced that traces of Novichok, a chemical nerve agent, was found on a bottle of water from Alexey Navalny’s hotel room in Siberia, where he stayed before falling ill on a subsequent flight. However, Navalny’s team has stated that this was not necessarily the source of the poison, suggesting that the substance could have been placed on different objects around the room. Since the water bottle contained just traces of Novichok, research suggests that when Navalny drank from the bottle, his mouth left traces of the poison.
The German government has confirmed that Navalny was poisoned with a chemical agent from the Novichok group. This conclusion has since been supported by labs in France and Sweden. When on a flight from Tomsk to Moscow on August 20, Navalny fell ill and was rushed to the hospital, where he was then transferred to receive medical care in Germany. Navalny’s group received notice of his condition before departing the hotel, and they were able to access it before it was cleaned.
