applied on Navalny's underwear, plus the addition of some faster-acting substance that hides symptoms (for example, clonidine)." Uglyov suggested that Novichok had been applied on Navalny's underwear in a hotel room, and that the poison had entered his body a few hours before departure. According to the scientist, Navalny received about 20% of the lethal dose. Uglyov suggested that the organizers decided to poison Navalny with Novichok, since they mistakenly believed that this substance would be impossible to detect. Uglyov also expressed the opinion that the Russian laboratory could not detect Novichok in the biological samples acquired from Navalny because “German specialists had more modern equipment and instruments for determining such quantities, which were taken from Alexei's blood. And those who did the tests in Moscow had much weaker equipment and the tests showed the absence of the substance." After the release of an independent investigation by Navalny, in which it was assumed that Alexei and his wife Yulia could have been subjected to attempts at poisoning earlier, Uglyov did not rule out that Navalny could have encountered Novichok three times, in previous cases receiving small doses insufficient for a lethal outcome. Vil Mirzayanov Chemical weapons specialist Vil Mirzayanov, who worked at GosNIIOKhT and in the 1990s revealed the Novichok development program in the USSR and Russia, agreed with the conclusions of the Bundeswehr special laboratory and suggested that the latest versions of Novichok were used to poison Navalny: the compounds A-242 or A-262. Mirzayanov also stated that the symptoms described by Navalny on 19 September were comparable to those he was aware of for similar cases. Leonid Rink One of the developers of the Novichok agent, Leonid Rink, stated that if Novichok had been used to poison Navalny, he "would have been dead, not left in coma" and suggested that what happened to Navalny was an attack of acute pancreatitis. This position was later dismissed as "nonsense" by doctor Yaroslav Ashikhmin who treated Navalny, as no increase in pancreatic enzymes was found in Navalny's blood. Another fact-checker pointed out at least three cases of people poisoned with Novichok who survived (Andrei Zheleznyakov, Sergei and Yulia Skripal) whose symptoms were very consistent with those of Navalny. Rink also theorized that Navalny had poisoned himself in a "big theater play" or that the Germans had copied Novichok and then poisoned Navalny in Germany, without providing any evidence for those theories. Rink