Pressure mounts on Russia to investigate Navalny's illness

MOSCOW (AP) — The Kremlin said Wednesday it doesn't want the illness of Russia's opposition leader, who is in a coma in a German hospital after a suspected poisoning, to affect relations with the West as international pressure mounted on Moscow to investigate Alexei Navalny's condition.

The statement came two days after doctors at the Berlin hospital where the 44-year-old is being treated said tests indicated he was poisoned, and minutes before before U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson joined other Western officials in demanding a transparent investigation.

“The poisoning of (Alexei) Navalny shocked the world,” Johnson said in a Tweet. “The perpetrators must be held accountable, (and) the UK will join international efforts to ensure justice is done.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov reiterated Wednesday that Moscow “categorically” disagreed with “hasty” conclusions that Navalny was a victim of an intentional poisoning, and said it doesn't want the situation to affect its ties with the West.

“Of course, we wouldn't want that... Secondly, there is no reason whatsoever for it,” Peskov told reporters. “We are absolutely, no less than others, interested in understanding what led to a coma."

Navalny, a politician and corruption investigator who is one of Putin’s fiercest critics, fell ill on a flight back to Moscow from Siberia on Thursday and was taken to a hospital in the Siberian city of Omsk after the plane made an emergency landing.

Over the weekend, he was transferred to the Charité hospital in Berlin, where doctors found indications of “cholinesterase inhibitors” in his system.

These act by blocking the breakdown of a key chemical in the body, acetycholine, that transmits signals between nerve cells. Navalny is being treated with the...