Navalny can come back to Russia at any time, Kremlin says

Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny, who was discharged from a hospital in Berlin earlier, can come back to Russia at any moment, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Wednesday, TASS reports.

"If the patient is really getting better, this is great, we wish him the soonest recovery," the spokesman said. "As for his return to Moscow, like any Russian citizen, he is free to do that at any moment."

However, Peskov pointed out that no official meetings are planned, "unless the patient wishes or plans to somehow share the information that he actively shares with colleagues from Germany and other countries with our law enforcement."

Navalny was rushed to a local hospital in the Siberian city of Omsk on August 20 after collapsing on a Moscow-bound flight from Tomsk. He fell into a coma and was put on a ventilator in an intensive care unit. On August 22, he was airlifted to Berlin and admitted to the Charite hospital.

On September 2, Berlin claimed that having examined Navalny’s test samples, German government toxicologists had come to the conclusion that the blogger had been affected by a toxic agent belonging to the Novichok family.

Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Russia was ready for comprehensive cooperation with Germany. He pointed out that no poisonous substances had been detected in Navalny’s system prior to his transfer to Berlin. Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that the German Foreign Office had not provided the Russian ambassador with any proof of its version of the incident.