Alexei Navalny's Instagram page posted a video of water bottles thought to be tainted with poison meant to kill him
- A video posted by Alexei Navalny's Instagram account on Thursday shows water bottles it says were used last month to try to poison the prominent critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
- Navalny fell ill on a flight from Tomsk, Siberia, to Moscow on August 20, and was hospitalized. Doctors in Germany have since confirmed that he was poisoned with the Soviet-made nerve agent Novichok.
- It was originally thought that Navalny's tea was poisoned in the Tomsk airport, but a caption in Thursday's video says water bottles in his Tomsk hotel room were tainted with Novichok.
- "It was on the bottle from Tomsk that the German laboratory found traces of 'Novichok' ... Now we understand: this was done before he [Navalny] left his room to go to the airport," the caption said.
A video was posted by Alexei Navalny's Instagram account on Thursday showing what it said were water bottles meant to kill the chief critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin with poison.
Navalny fell ill on a flight from Tomsk, Siberia, to Moscow on August 20. The plane made an emergency landing in Omsk, Siberia, and Navalny was taken to a hospital.
He was kept in a coma for several days by Russian doctors. The hospital initially denied requests to let his family fly him to a foreign hospital for specialist care, though he was later allowed to go to Germany.
At the time, Kira Yarmish, his press secretary, said he had been poisoned at the airport. German doctors who have conducted tests on Navalny have since concluded he was poisoned with Novichok, a deadly Soviet-developed nerve agent.
It was initially suggested that the poison was placed in his cup of tea at the airport. The video posted to Instagram on Thursday, however, showed multiple bottles of water in a room at the Xander Hotel in Tomsk that a caption said were tainted with Novichok.
"It was on the bottle from Tomsk that the German laboratory found traces of 'Novichok.' Three more laboratories that took tests from Alexei confirmed that Navalny was poisoned. Now we understand: this was done before he left his room to go to the airport," the caption said.
In the video, numerous water bottles can be seen around the hotel room highlighted with red rings, including in the mini fridge and on his bedside table.
"This is a bottle from a room in a Tomsk hotel where Navalny himself and our entire film crew stayed," the caption said.
The post added that there were "several items" that Navalny could have used in his Tomsk hotel room, including the water.
An investigation into the poisoning by the independent Russian news website Proekt found that after news of Navalny's poisoning reached members of his team who had remained at the hotel in Tomsk, they hurried to save as much information as possible from the room, fearing Russian authorities would soon be at their door.
"Everything was done to save the evidence," an activist from the Tomsk headquarters of Navalny's campaign told Proekt.
Georgy Alburov, an investigator at Navalny's foundation, said: "In Russia it will definitely not be investigated."
Navalny is the leading political opposition leader in Russia. He campaigned to run against Putin in 2018 but was barred from running for president. He has regularly been arrested, detained, and jailed on accusations of sedition.
In the wake of his poisoning last month, pro-Putin Russian media attempted to push a narrative that Navalny was hospitalized after heavy drinking the night before.
A picture posted to Navalny's Instagram page on Tuesday showed him on a hospital bed.
"Hi, this is Navalny," the post said. "I miss you. I still can hardly do anything, but yesterday I was able to breathe on my own for the whole day. Just myself. I did not use any outside help, not even the simplest valve in my throat."