World leaders can be in little doubt: the evidence leads directly to Moscow and Putin

The debate over what precisely happened to Alexei Navalny has raged for almost two weeks. Some facts are agreed. The Russian opposition leader drank a cup of tea at Tomsk airport and then collapsed on a flight back to Moscow. After cursory treatment in a Russian hospital, he was flown to Berlin. Since then German doctors have been treating him in the Charité hospital, where he remains in a medically induced coma.

Far murkier is the question of who poisoned Navalny and why. On Wednesday the German government provided a pretty big clue when it revealed Navalny was poisoned with novichok. This is the substance used in 2018 against Sergei and Yulia Skripal. It was smeared on the front door of Skripal’s Salisbury home. Novichok also killed Dawn Sturgess, a Wiltshire woman who unknowingly sprayed it on her wrists.

Russian opposition leader flown to Berlin after doctors allow discharge from Siberian hospital

Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny has been evacuated to a hospital in Berlin to be treated for suspected poisoning, after his wife and supporters begged Vladimir Putin to let him leave a Siberian hospital.

Doctors in the city of Omsk had initially refused to allow him to leave their care, but he was finally allowed to fly out on an air ambulance sent by a German charity in the early hours of Saturday morning.

Letter appeals to Russian leader after doctors refuse to allow Kremlin critic to leave country

The wife of the Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny has appealed directly to Vladimir Putin to allow her husband to be evacuated to a clinic in Germany to receive treatment for a suspected poisoning.

Doctors treating Navalny in the Siberian city of Omsk have refused to release him for evacuation to a clinic abroad, sparking a standoff with his family and aides who say his life is in danger in Russia.