German police investigate possible poisoning of Russian dissidents

Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a prominent anti-Kremlin businessman, hosted an event in Berlin attended by two Russian dissidents
Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a prominent anti-Kremlin businessman, hosted an event in Berlin attended by two Russian dissidents
DOSSIER CENTER VIA AP

German police are investigating whether two Russian dissidents who attended a meeting in Berlin last month were poisoned with a nerve agent.

One of the women fell ill shortly before the meeting, which was held last month by prominent anti-Kremlin businessman Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

The campaigner, who has not been publicly named, was treated at the Charité, the same German hospital that saved the life of the Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny after an apparent assassination attempt with novichok, a chemical weapon, in 2020.

A second woman who attended the meeting, Natalia Arno, a pro-democracy activist who was exiled from Russia in 2014 and founded the Free Russia Foundation in Washington, claimed that an unidentified western intelligence agency was looking into the possibility that she