Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny said he believed Russia's intelligence services had poisoned him with a rare nerve agent because authorities saw him as a threat ahead of next year's parliamentary elections.
"They understood that there were big, big problems threatening them ahead of elections for the State Duma," Navalny said in a YouTube interview with a Russian blogger, his first video appearance since being discharged from a Berlin hospital.
The Kremlin has rejected any suggestion that President Vladimir Putin or the Russian authorities were responsible for Navalny's condition.
Navalny said he did not know how a Novichok nerve agent had got into his system, but that he could have touched something.
Navalny, 44, said his health had much improved and that doctors were surprised by the speed of his recovery, but that his hands shake significantly and he was undergoing physical therapy.
Navalny emerged from a coma in recent weeks after collapsing on a domestic flight in Russian Siberia in August.
According to Reuters, he was flown to Berlin for treatment and German doctors said he was poisoned with Novichok, a rare Russian nerve agent.
