Alexey Navalny receives an apology

Navalny walks down stairs at Charite hospital in Berlin, Germany, in this image obtained from social media [Courtesy of Instagram/Reuters]. A scientist involved in the secret Soviet programme to create the Novichok nerve agent has apologised to the Russian opposition politician Alexey Navalny, who is recovering from poisoning in Berlin. "I offer my profound apologies to Navalny for the fact that I took part in this criminal business, developing this substance that he was poisoned with," said Mirzayanov, who now lives in the United States and wrote the first articles on Novichok's development in the early 1990s. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/09/russian-novichok-scientist-apologises-navalny-200920132104839.html