Chemical security

Navalny's team says nerve agent used to poison him found on hotel room water bottle

Traces of the Novichok nerve agent allegedly used to poison Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny were found in a water bottle in his hotel room in the Siberian city of Tomsk, where he was staying before he fell critically ill, Navalny’s colleagues said on Thursday.

The discovery suggests that Navalny was poisoned before he left the hotel and not at the airport, where they initially suspected he might have ingested the poison through a cup of tea.

Navalny fell critically ill on a flight from Tomsk to Moscow almost a month ago and was later airlifted to Berlin in an induced coma. Germany toxicology tests showed Navalny had been poisoned with a nerve agent from the Novichok family, a type of military chemical weapon developed covertly by Russia and used in the 2018 poisoning of the former Russian double agent Sergey Skripal in Britain.