Navalny chief of staff on opposition leader's recovery

Alexei Navalny's chief of staff on Sunday spoke about the unexpectedly fast recovery of the poisoned oppositionist.

Speaking in an interview with German TV station RTL, Volkov said that Navalny had been discharged from the Berlin Charite hospital where he had been treated for the last few weeks, but the treatment is still ongoing.

Navalny's recovery was proceeding according to the most favorable scenario, the chief of staff explained, but the attending physicians did not yet want to predict whether a complete recovery or permanent damage was to be expected.

When asked why Navalny wanted to return to Russia, where a second attack could happen, Volkov replied that Navalny's political work could not be continued from abroad, so he had to return to Russia - although aware of the risks.

According to Volkov, Navalny's poisoning has changed the way the world perceives Putin and Russia.

Navalny, Russian President Vladimir Putin's fiercest critic, fell ill on a domestic flight to Moscow on August 20 and was brought to a hospital in the Siberian city of Omsk before he was transferred to Germany for treatment two days later.

A German military lab later determined that the Russian politician was poisoned with Novichok, the same class of Soviet-era agent that Britain said was used in 2018 on a former Russian spy and his daughter in England.

Navalny was kept in an induced coma for more than a week while being treated with an antidote.

The Kremlin has repeatedly said they see no grounds for a criminal case, as Russian labs and the hospital in Omsk found no indications of poisoning.

Other European labs have backed Germany's stance that Navalny was poisoned with independent tests of their own.