BERLIN: Alexei Navalny, a vocal critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has been removed from a medically induced coma and is responding to speech, Berlin’s Charite hospital said on Monday.
The hospital, which has been treating Navalny since he was airlifted to Germany after falling ill on a Russian domestic flight last month, said his condition has improved and he is being weaned off mechanical ventilation.
“It remains too early to gauge the potential long-term effects of his severe poisoning,” Charite said in a statement.
Navalny was airlifted to Germany last month after collapsing on a flight from the Siberian city of Tomsk to Moscow. It made an emergency landing in Omsk so that Navalny could be stretchered off.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said her government has concluded Navalny was poisoned with Novichok, the same substance that Britain said was used against a Russian double agent and his daughter in an attack in England in 2018. Moscow says it has seen no evidence he was poisoned.