Alexei Navalny's official Instagram account has published a video from the opposition figure's hotel room in Tomsk showing the bottle of water that they claim contained traces of the Novichok nerve agent.
After learning about Navalny's condition, the part of his team that remained in Tomsk went to his hotel room with his lawyer to take "everything that could be of use to German doctors", the caption to the post says.
According to the publication, the bottle that is seen in the video was exactly the one "where the German laboratory detected traces of the nerve agent". The post apparently refers to Der Spiegel's report on 4 September alleging that traces of Novichok-like substance were not only found in Navalny's samples but also on his skin and in the bottle he drank from.
Navalny's press secretary Kira Yarmysh previously claimed that the Russian opposition figure had fallen gravely ill due to having drunk tea laced with poison at the airport.
Meanwhile, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said on Thursday that it had sent a team of experts to collect samples from Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny and will share the results with Berlin.
What Happened to Alexei Navalny?
Navalny was rushed to hospital after his health suddenly deteriorated while he was on board a domestic flight in Russia. Doctors in the Siberian city of Omsk, where he was taken, diagnosed him with a metabolism dysfunction caused by low blood sugar levels, after fighting for Navalny's life for 44 hours non-stop after the incident.
The Kremlin critic was taken to Germany for further treatment. Initially, German doctors announced that they had found traces of a substance from a group of cholinesterase inhibitors. However, in early September the German doctors claimed to have found traces of a Novichok-like substance in his system. Germany later also claimed three laboratories had independently confirmed the presence of traces of a Novichok-like substance in Alexei Navalny's system
Moscow responded by pointing out the lack of evidence in Berlin's claims and noting that Russian doctors had found no toxic substances in Navalny.
The alleged poisoning of Navalny prompted many European officials to call for the imposition of additional sanctions on Russia. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said Moscow will respond reciprocally if the Western countries impose new sanctions over the Navalny case.
