BERLIN — Alexei Navalny, the prominent Russian opposition figure and Kremlin critic, was poisoned, Berlin’s Charité Hospital said in a statement Monday, citing clinical results confirmed by independent laboratories.

Although the exact substance that poisoned Navalny is not yet known, it is believed to be a nerve inhibitor, Charité’s statement said. The hospital added that Navalny remains in an artificially induced coma but that “there is no acute danger to his life.”

He is being treated with Atropine, and “longer-term effects, especially to the nervous system, could happen at any point,” the statement said.

Navalny was stricken Thursday during a flight en route to Moscow from Siberia. His spokeswoman and others quickly claimed that the 44-year-old was the latest victim of a poisoning ordered by the state, a method used before in attacks linked to Russian agents.

Navalny was loudly moaning in pain and then lost consciousness during the flight, prompting the plane to make an emergency landing in Omsk, where Navalny spent two days in a hospital. At the urging of his family, Omsk doctors approved Navalny’s release on Friday so he could be flown to Germany aboard an ambulance aircraft the next morning.

Since arriving at Charité Hospital, Navalny has been under the protection of Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office, which also provides security for German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other government officials. That doesn’t usually extend to private citizens, and German government spokesman Steffen Seibert said Monday that there was “no formal invitation” to Navalny, meaning he’s not a guest of the state and only in the country on a privately organized initiative.

Seibert said Germany extended an offer to help on “humanitarian grounds” and at the request of his family.

“It was clear after his arrival that security measures had to be put in place because we are dealing with a patient who was likely the target of a poison attack,” Seibert said, adding that other Kremlin critics have been poisoned in recent years.

Pyotr Verzilov, a member of the Pussy Riot protest group, accused Russian military intelligence of responsibility for his suspected poisoning in 2018. After he was initially hospitalized in Moscow, he was also transferred to Charité for treatment. No traces of poison were found in his system, but staff at the hospital said there was no other explanation for his condition.

Navalny, who was barred from running for president in 2018, has no shortage of ill-wishers in Russia. For nearly a decade, his Anti-Corruption Foundation produced written and online video reports exposing graft and other wrongdoing by President Vladimir Putin’s allies. Last year, Navalny and his team launched its “Smart Vote” initiative, which helps voters identify which candidates have the best chance of beating out those aligned with Putin’s United Russia party.

Navalny has been arrested in Russia 13 times; in 2018, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that his detention from 2012 to 2014 violated his rights and appeared to be part of a broader effort “to bring the opposition under control.”

Navalny’s associates were critical of his treatment last week by the medical staff in Omsk, accusing physicians of initially blocking his transport to Berlin because they faced pressure from authorities who wanted to hinder investigation into the incident.

Chief doctor Alexander Murakhovsky said at a news conference Monday that the hospital “made quite an effort to save Alexei Navalny’s life, there can be no doubt about it.”

Asked about a photo posted on Twitter by Navalny’s spokeswoman, Kira Yarmysh, that showed three unidentified men in plain clothes sitting in his office, who Yarmysh claimed were members of Russia’s security services, Murakhovsky said: “I can’t say who that was. I can’t say that they were doing something.”

Doctors in Omsk offered several theories about what might have caused Navalny’s condition, including a steep drop in blood sugar, but they cast doubt on the claim that he was poisoned.

“The poisoning diagnosis was one of the first to be suggested, including by paramedics,” Anatoly Kalinichenko, the deputy chief physician of Omsk Emergency Hospital No. 1, told reporters Monday. “This is why the patient was taken to the toxicology department. If we had found any confirmation of poisoning, things would have been much easier for us. Yet we received definitive answers from two laboratories, which said they did not detect any chemical or toxic substances they could describe as poisons or poisoning products.”

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