On 20 August 2020, Russian opposition leader and anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny was poisoned with the Novichok nerve agent and as a result, he was hospitalized in serious condition.

[34] Journalist and human rights advocate Anna Politkovskaya, known for her criticism of Putin and her coverage of the Second Chechen War, fell ill during a flight to cover the Beslan school siege in 2004 after drinking tea in an apparent poisoning attempt.

[32] Although doctors in Russia initially suggested he suffered from a metabolic disorder caused by low blood sugar, they later stated that he had most likely been poisoned by antipsychotics or neuroleptics and that industrial chemicals such as 2-ethylhexyl diphenyl phosphate were found.

[44] Approximately 31 hours after onset of his symptoms, a doctor from the German team was granted brief access to Alexey Navalny, and recorded bradycardia, hypothermia (34.4°C), and wide pupils non-reactive to light.

[34] Dr. Murakhovsky wrote a letter to the Charité, demanding that they show laboratory data about him being poisoned with a cholinesterase inhibitor, stating the doctors in his hospital found no such evidence.

The head of the FBK investigation department, Maria Pevchikh, subsequently took these bottles to Germany on the same medical plane on which Navalny himself was transported, and handed them over to German specialists.

[65] Upon Navalny's admission to Charité hospital intensive care unit, toxicological analysis and drug screening in the patient's blood and urine samples was performed.

[66] On 2 September 2020, the German government announced that scientists at the Bundeswehr Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology obtained in unequivocal proof that Navalny was poisoned by Novichok type nerve agent.

[78] Bruno Kahl, the head of Germany's foreign intelligence service, revealed that the Novichok agent identified from Navalny's toxicology results was a "harder" form than previously seen.

[80] The Charité hospital, with Navalny's consent, published a scientific article titled "Novichok nerve agent poisoning" in the peer-reviewed medical journal The Lancet.

[81][82][83] The doctors also confirmed that severe poisoning was the cause of Navalny's condition: "A laboratory of the German armed forces designated by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons identified an organophosphorus nerve agent from the Novichok group in blood samples collected immediately after the patient's admission to Charité.

[93][94] On 6 October 2020, the OPCW announced that results of testing samples obtained from Navalny had confirmed the presence of a Novichok nerve agent, saying:[4] ... the biomarkers of the cholinesterase inhibitor found in Mr Navalny's blood and urine samples have similar structural characteristics as the toxic chemicals belonging to schedules 1.A.14 and 1.A.15 that were added to the Annex on Chemicals to the Convention during the Twenty-Fourth Session of the Conference of the States Parties in November 2019.

[107] On 14 December 2020, Bellingcat and The Insider, in co-operation with CNN, Der Spiegel[108] and Anti-Corruption Foundation, published a joint investigation implicating agents from Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) in Navalny's poisoning.

During the phone conversation, Navalny posed as an aide to the secretary of Russia's Security Council Nikolai Patrushev, pretending to debrief Kudryavtsev about the operation and asking for details of why the mission had failed.

[135] Uglyov also expressed the opinion that the Russian laboratory could not detect Novichok in the biological samples acquired from Navalny because "German specialists had more modern equipment and instruments for determining such quantities, which were taken from Alexei's blood.

The fact that she, as the attending physician, was not allowed to examine Alexei, nor access consultations and medical documentation for two days, in her opinion, indicated that they had tried to hide the symptoms of poisoning from her, on the basis of which she concluded that the Omsk doctors were given instructions to be silent.

[147] Andy Smith, Professor of the Department of Toxicology at the University of Leicester, noted that it would be difficult to identify a specific toxic substance in Navalny's body after a few days, though not impossible, given recent advances in analytical chemistry.

[148] The head of the Institute of Toxicology in Munich, Professor Martin Goettlicher, in an interview with Deutsche Welle, noted that Navalny's symptomatology was in many ways similar to that of the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal.

Goettlicher also explained that when Navalny was poisoned, those around him did not necessarily have to suffer, as was the case with the Skripals, since the Novichok can be an oily liquid that evaporates or spreads poorly, depending on how the substance got into the body and in what quantity.

[143] A group of six leading Western experts in the field of toxicology and chemical weapons, in an interview with the BBC Russian Service, commented that prompt medical assistance saved Navalny's life: he was given the antidote atropine (perhaps preventively) and breathing support.

[163] French President Emmanuel Macron stated that France was ready to offer "all necessary assistance ... in terms of health care, asylum, protection" to Navalny and his family and demanded clarity on the circumstances surrounding the incident.

[164] According to John Sipher, a former CIA station chief in Moscow, "Whether or not Putin personally ordered the poisoning, he is behind any and all efforts to maintain control through intimidation and murder".

[165] On 24 August, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Foreign Minister Heiko Maas in a joint statement called on the Russian authorities to clarify in detail and as transparently as possible the entirety of circumstances surrounding the incident, and to identify and prosecute those responsible.

[168] On 25 August, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said that France, on the basis of the preliminary conclusion of the Charité clinic doctors about Navalny's poisoning, considered the incident a criminal act and called for finding and punishing those responsible.

[169][170] U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun expressed deep concern about Navalny's condition, as well as the impact of reports of his poisoning on civil society in Russia.

[3] The European External Action Service in a statement condemned the poisoning and said that it is "essential that the Russian government investigates thoroughly and in a transparent manner the assassination attempt of Mr Navalny".

[178] The Italian Foreign Ministry "condemned with force" the poisoning of Navalny, called this act a "crime", and, expressing "profound concern and indignation", demanded an explanation from Russia.

[185] On 8 September, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet called on Russia "to carry out, or fully cooperate with, a thorough, transparent, independent and impartial investigation, after German specialists said they have "unequivocal proof" that he was poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent.

"[186][187] In a March 2021 report, the East StratCom Task Force of the European External Action Service registered an increase in false information propagated in Russia about Germany as a result of the deterioration in German-Russian relations developed since the poison attack.

[203] The Guardian critic Phil Harrison awarded it 5/5 stars calling it "... one of the most jaw-dropping things you'll ever witness", and "this terrifying documentary enters the realms of the far-fetched spy thriller – and yet it's all true".