Alexei Navalny: Russian activist discharged from Berlin hospital

The poisoned Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny has been discharged by the hospital treating him in Berlin.

The Charité Hospital said it was ending acute medical care because his condition had sufficiently improved.

Mr Navalny posted a picture of himself on social media standing unaided with a message saying doctors had given him every chance of a full recovery.

Germany says Mr Navalny, a critic of President Vladimir Putin, was poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent.

He collapsed on a flight from Siberia on 20 August, and was transferred to the Charité hospital in the German capital.

His team alleges he was poisoned on the orders of President Putin. The Kremlin denies any involvement.

A statement from the hospital said that 44-year-old Mr Navalny had spent 32 days there, including 24 days in intensive care.

“Based on the patient’s progress and current condition, the treating physicians believe that complete recovery is possible. However, it remains too early to gauge the potential long-term effects of his severe poisoning,” it said.

Earlier this month the hospital revealed that Mr Navalny had begun to recover, saying that he had been removed from a ventilator and could leave his bed.

At the time, the German government said that laboratories in France and Sweden had reconfirmed German tests showing that the poison used on Mr Navalny was a Novichok agent.

The Kremlin has said there is no proof of that.

In an Instagram post on Tuesday, Mr Navalny rubbished suggestions – purportedly from President Putin – that he had poisoned himself.

French newspaper Le Monde reported that in a telephone call with President Emmanuel Macron on 14 September, Mr Putin had spoken “with contempt about Alexei Navalny, considering him a simple internet troublemaker who had simulated diseases in the past”.

“Putin has outsmarted me,” Mr Navalny wrote on Instagram, mocking the Russian president. “He is nobody’s fool. As a result, I, like a fool, spent 18 days in a coma but failed to achieve what I wanted. The provocation has failed!”