Advisor Says Nalvany Poisoning Meant to Kill Him Not Scare Him

Leonid Volkov

                 

Berlin (CNN)For years Leonid Volkov has experienced the same terrifying dream about his best friend and colleague, the leading Russian opposition activist Alexey Navalny. 
"I used to have a nightmare many times that I wake up from someone calling me and saying, Alexey was killed or something very bad happened to him," Volkov recalls in an interview with CNN. "I had this nightmare at least 10 times in my life."
Last week he lived that nightmare. An early morning phone call told him Navalny had collapsed while on a flight from the Siberian city of Tomsk and he was now in a coma. He says having anticipated this moment didn't make the reality any easier to process.
*The latest from Germany on Nalvany on Friday is that he is in serious condition but alive.
 *Loud silence from Trump  on poisoning of Russian opposition leader  

The Guradian
 Navalny is being treated with atropine, the same antidote used after the 2018 nerve agent attack in Salisbury on the former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter. 
Charité said on Friday “there has been some improvement in the symptoms caused by the inhibition of cholinesterase activity”.

“While his condition remains serious, there is no immediate danger to his life,” the hospital said. “However, due to the severity of the patient’s poisoning, it remains too early to gauge potential long-term effects.”

Navalny’s allies say he was deliberately poisoned and that the Kremlin was responsible. These accusations have been rejected by Russian officials as “empty noise”.

Navalny was brought to Germany for treatment after the chancellor, Angela Merkel, personally intervened.

“We have an obligation to do everything so that this can be cleared up,” Merkel told reporters at her annual summer news conference on Friday. “It was right and good that Germany said we were prepared to take in Mr Navalny. And now we will try to get this cleared up with the possibilities we have, which are indeed limited.”

Merkel said that when there was more clarity about what happened, Germany would try to ensure there was a response from Europe. She cited the poisoning of the Skripals, which prompted many European countries to expel Russian diplomats.

Navalny’s team submitted a request last week for Russia to launch a criminal investigation into a possible attempted murder, but said there had been no response.

The Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he saw no grounds for a criminal inquiry until the cause of the politician’s condition was fully established. Russian prosecutors said on Thursday that a preliminary inquiry had not found any indication of deliberate criminal acts committed against Navalny.