German doctors say Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was poisoned

Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader and prominent Kremlin critic, was poisoned, according to a statement from a hospital in Berlin on Monday.

“The specific substance is not yet known,” the Charité hospital said, but it is thought to be a cholinesterase inhibitor — a group that affects the central nervous system, and includes nerve agents and pesticides. Navalny “is in an intensive care unit and is still in a coma,” the statement added, “but there is currently no acute danger to his life.”

Navalny’s spokesperson Kira Yarmysh wrote in a tweet, “The poisoning of Navalny is no longer a hypothesis, but a fact.”

Navalny has been in a medically-induced coma since Thursday, when he fell ill on a flight to Moscow. In a video recorded by a fellow passenger, Navalny could be heard moaning in pain. The flight made an emergency landing in Omsk where Navalny was rushed to a hospital.

Doctors from the Omsk hospital said he had not been poisoned but Navalny's associates accused the Omsk doctors of trying to cover up the investigation into the cause of his illness.

On Monday, Yarmysh tweeted: "The fact that Alexei had a 'toxic poisoning' was told to me by ambulance doctors. This was not my guess. So, the very first doctor who saw Alexei made that conclusion. All the following days, the head doctor of the Omsk hospital just fooled everyone."

Navalny has been receiving treatment in Berlin since Saturday.

German government spokesperson Steffen Seibert told reporters earlier on Monday that it was "fairly likely" that Navalny was poisoned.