Aleksei Navalny, Putin Critic, Shares Video of Evidence Collection - The New York Times

Aides of the Russian opposition leader collected items from his hotel room in Siberia as soon as he fell ill, according to a video posted on his Instagram account.

Navalny, Russia’s most prominent opposition leader, showed symptoms of poisoning last month, members of his team rushed to the Siberian hotel where he had been staying and grabbed anything that could possibly be used as evidence — including a water bottle that tests showed was tainted with a highly toxic nerve agent.

Navalny’s team swiftly donned rubber gloves and scoured his room at the Xander Hotel in Tomsk, packing evidence into blue plastic bags.

Navalny’s team and German investigators say, eventually helped German military scientists determine that the opposition leader had been poisoned with a class of chemical weapon called a Novichok, a Soviet-designed poison that Russian operatives have used in at least one previous assassination attempt.

Navalny’s plane made an emergency landing, his aides contacted members of the team who had stayed in Tomsk to tell them what had happened, according to Mr.

“They called a lawyer, went to the hotel room, which Navalny had just left, and began to identify, record and pack up everything that they found, including bottles of water from the hotel.”.

Navalny’s team was able to sneak the bottle and other items out of the country without the Russian officials knowing.

Navalny’s team that the Russian authorities had no interest in conducting a real investigation.

Navalny’s team, according to the Instagram post, now believes that he was poisoned in that hotel room, not at the airport as they had originally suspected.

A similar poison was used by Russian military intelligence operatives who traveled to Britain in 2018 to attack Sergei V.