Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny said he believed Russia's intelligence services had poisoned him with a Novichok nerve agent because authorities saw him as a threat ahead of next year's parliamentary elections.
"They understood that there were big, big problems threatening them ahead of
elections for the State Duma," Navalny said in a
YouTube interview with a
Russian blogger, his first video appearance since being discharged from a
Berlin hospital.
The outspoken critic of President
Vladimir Putin emerged from a coma in early September after collapsing on a domestic flight in Siberia on Aug. 20.