Alexei Navalny has been taken out of his medically induced coma and is being gradually taken off a ventilator, the Charité hospital in Berlin where he has been undergoing treatment for the past two weeks.

German authorities have said that Russia’s de facto opposition leader was poisoned with a nerve agent from the Novichok family, the substance that Britain has said was used to poison a former Russian spy on its soil in 2018. The 44-year-old anti-corruption campaigner fell violently ill on a flight to Moscow on Aug. 20 and was evacuated to Germany after two days of treatment in Siberia.

“The patient has been removed from his medically induced coma and is being weaned off mechanical ventilation. Navalny is responding to verbal stimuli. However, that the long-term health effects of Navalny’s severe poisoning were still unknown”, - Charité said in a statement.