New evidence indicates that Russian President Vladimir Putin was responsible for the recent Novichok nerve-agent poisoning of investigative journalist and human rights activist Alexei Navalny.
Traces of Novichok were found on one of the water bottles in Navalny’s room at the Xander Hotel in Tomsk, Russia, according to a German laboratory. It was shortly after leaving that hotel room on Aug. 20 that Navalny fell ill as he flew to Moscow. After an emergency landing in the nearby city of Omsk, Navalny was detained in a hospital for 36 hours. The Kremlin’s FSB precipitated that detention, pressuring Omsk doctors into ruling out any poisoning and refusing a request from Navalny’s medical team that he be transported to a hospital in Berlin, Germany.
