Poison found on a bottle of the Navalny hotel according to his relatives

The Hotel Xander where Alexei Navalny resided before his poisoning.

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How was Alexei Navalny poisoned?

According to his team, traces of the innervating agent at the origin of the opponent's intoxication were found on a plastic water bottle recovered from the hotel room where he stayed.

The 44-year-old lawyer, politician and anti-corruption activist became uneasy on August 20 during a flight back to Moscow from the Siberian city of Tomsk, where he had come to support municipal candidates and to shoot a corruption investigation local elites.

Major proof?

On Instagram, his team said Thursday that traces of the Novichok-type nerve substance, identified by a German laboratory, had been found on an "ordinary plastic water bottle" picked up in Alexey Navalny's hotel room. in Tomsk by his supporters, in the minutes following the announcement that the opponent had felt bad.

She specifies that the agent was identified "two weeks later", the bottle of water then becoming the evidence allowing to conclude of poisoning with Novichok.

This discovery means that "Navalny was poisoned before he left the hotel, and not at the airport or on the plane," spokeswoman Kira Iarmych said in a video. that the first suspicions were directed towards a tea drunk at Tomsk airport.

Chamber scrutinized

During his stay in Tomsk, Alexeï Navalny had stayed three days at the Xander Hotel, a four-star establishment which he had also frequented the restaurant, according to the police.

Video accompanying Navalny's team message shows his supporters sifting through his hotel room and packing possible clues before police can visit the scene.

"As it was absolutely clear that Navalny was not" slightly ill "(...), we had decided to collect everything that could be useful and to transmit it to the doctors in Germany", explain his supporters in a press release, adding that 'it was "obvious that there would be no investigation in Russia".

A close ally of the opponent, Lioubov Sobol, said on Twitter that it was "important to understand that there were traces of Novichok on the bottle, but that does not mean that he was poisoned by this bottle of water ”.

The victim was able to transfer them to the container.

No criminal investigation

Proekt.

media

, a Russian news site, published a detailed investigation on Thursday citing several relatives of the opponent saying that the poison was no longer detectable in his body when his transfer to Berlin took place.

According to the site, Alexei Navalny no longer remembers when exactly he drank this bottle of Svyatoy Istochnik (“Holy Source”), a very popular Russian brand.

One of the inventors of the nerve agent, Vladimir Ouglev, assured Proekt.

media that any ingestion of the poison would likely have been fatal.

The site adds that the door to Navalny's bedroom was being filmed by two CCTV cameras, the images of which were recovered by the transport police, who launched preliminary checks.

But despite sufficient evidence, "a criminal investigation has still not been opened", denounces Ms. Iarmych.

The Navalny affair provoked a new pass of arms between Russia and Western countries: the European Parliament on Thursday called for severe sanctions against Russia, denouncing "a systemic effort to silence it".

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