Navalny says Putin’s statement about helping ensure his release for treatment abroad is ‘100 percent false’
According to Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny, he isn’t subject to any travel restrictions that would have prevented him from leaving Russia, and therefore didn’t need President Vladimir Putin’s personal authorization to go abroad for treatment following his poisoning in August.
In an Instagram post denying Putin’s statements, Navalny maintained that he considers the Russian president personally responsible for orchestrating his poisoning.
“As for the ‘travel restrictions,’ it’s ridiculous. 100 percent false. I have a passport. I won at the European Court on this matter. In the fabricated case on ‘insulting a veteran’ they tried to place me under recognizance not to leave, but the article doesn’t provide for restrictions on freedom. I refused to sign and, as you know, I went to Novosibirsk and Tomsk. No one was restricting me.
The foregoing convinces me once again: it was Putin who ordered this assassination attempt. He forbade taking me out [of the country], to hide traces of a chemical weapon. The ‘un-transportability’ came from him, and not from the doctors. Two months have passed and there still isn’t even a criminal case — this is also Putin’s personal order. Like any criminal, he’s simply covering his tracks,” Navalny wrote.
In August, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Putin wasn’t involved in any negotiations regarding the medical evacuation of Alexey Navalny from Omsk to Berlin for treatment.
On Thursday, October 22, however, Putin said that he personally asked the Russian Attorney General’s Office to allow Navalny to leave the country and thereby helped secure his release for treatment abroad. The next day, Peskov clarified that Putin resolved the issue of Navalny’s right to travel abroad with the Attorney General’s Office, but it was the doctors who gave permission to send him to Berlin.
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Navalny’s poisoning
Alexey Navalny was on a flight from Tomsk to Moscow when he fell violently ill on August 20. The plane made an emergency landing in Omsk, where he was hospitalized in a coma; two days later he was transferred to Germany for treatment. On September 2, the German officials confirmed that Navalny was poisoned with a substance from the Novichok group of nerve agents. On September 7, Navalny’s doctors brought him out of his coma. He was discharged from the hospital on September 23 and is still undergoing rehabilitation in Germany.