German police are investigating the possible poisoning of two Russian women who attended a conference organized by Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
A well-known Russian critic of the Kremlin organized it in Berlin at the end of April, writes Reuters. Berlin police told the agency that “the case has been opened” after the newspaper Welt am Sonntag, citing the Russian research media group Agency, reported that two women had symptoms of possible poisoning.
One of them is a journalist, she went to the Charité hospital in Berlin. Her symptoms, the media write, could have appeared even before the conference on April 29 and 30. The second victim is the director of the public organization Free Russia Foundation, Natalya Arno. On her Facebook page, she wrote about finding the door to her hotel room ajar and described her condition:
“I woke up at 5 am suffering from severe pain and strange symptoms.”
Police did not release details of the incident, citing an ongoing investigation. In recent years, notes Reuters, there have been several poisonings of Kremlin opponents abroad and in Russia.
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was treated in Russia and then in Germany for what Western lab tests showed was an attempt to poison him with a nerve agent in Siberia in 2020. The government in Moscow denied the allegations. Navalny voluntarily returned to Russia in 2021 from Germany. He was arrested in January of that year and has been in jail ever since.
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