Putin opponent Navalny posts photo from hospital, plans to return to Russia

Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny shared a photograph from a Berlin hospital on Tuesday, sitting up in bed and surrounded by his family, and said he could now breathe independently following his poisoning last month.

The photo - the strongest evidence yet of Navalny’s advancing recovery since he fell violently sick in Siberia on Aug. 20 - was swiftly followed by confirmation from his press spokeswoman that he planned to return to Russia.

“Hi, this is Navalny. I miss you all,” he wrote in the caption to his Instagram followers. “I can still hardly do anything, but yesterday I could breathe all day on my own. Actually on my own.”

Navalny, the leading opponent of Russian President Vladimir Putin, fell violently sick in Siberia last month and was airlifted to Berlin. Germany says laboratory tests in three countries have determined he was poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent, and Western governments have demanded an explanation from Russia.

Moscow has called the accusations groundless. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov reiterated on Tuesday that Moscow was open to clearing up what happened to Navalny, but it needed access to information on his case from Germany.

He said Moscow did not understand why, if French and Swedish laboratories had been able to test his medical samples, Russia was not being given the same access.

The case has put further strain on relations between Russia and the West, already at a post-Cold War low since Moscow’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and the attempted poisoning of a former Russian double agent with the same Novichok nerve agent in England in 2018.