Doctors reveal Navalny symptoms, treatment in new article

Doctors revealed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s symptoms and their treatment for the 44-year-old’s suspected poisoning in a new article published in the Lancet medical journal.

In the article, doctors from Berlin’s Charite hospital detailed their treatment for Novichok, the Soviet-era nerve agent believed to have been used by a Russian FSB security bureau team that tailed Navalny for years before his attempted assassination in August.

Navalny’s doctors wrote that they used a variety of drugs to treat him and placed him in a medically induced coma after his arrival at the hospital. Though he experienced some loss of speech and other debilitating mental and physical symptoms, Navalny’s doctors “found [he had experienced] near-complete recovery of neurological, neuropsychological, and neurophysiological findings without evidence of polyneuropathy” within three weeks of his return to consciousness.

According to The Associated Press, Navalny gave permission for the article to be published.

The medical team’s findings were published on Wednesday, just days after Navalny’s team released video of the opposition leader confronting one of his suspected attackers by phone and extracting a full confession from the man, an FSB agent who admitted that substance including the poison had been applied to a pair of underpants left in Navalny’s hotel room.

During the call, the FSB agent, Konstantin Kudryavtsev, credited Navalny’s survival to the quick response of the pilot of the plane Navalny was aboard when he fell ill, as well as emergency medical technicians on the ground in Germany.

Russia has denied involvement in Navalny’s poisoning, and this week its president, Vladimir Putin, quipped that his agents “would’ve probably finished it” had they been tasked to kill Navalny.