Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was poisoned ‘without a doubt’ by the nerve agent novichok, the German government have said.

Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert said tests were carried out on samples from Navalny from his hospital bed in Berlin.

They were performed by a specialist German military labratory and showed proof of 'a chemical nerve agent from the novichok group’.

The same nerve agent was used to poison Sergei Skripal, a former Russian spy, and his daughter in Salisbury, Wiltshire in 2018. 

It is one of the most dangerous agents ever to be created as it comes from the cholinesterase inhibitor group which breaks down a neurotransmitter called acetylcholine.

Navalny became ill on August 20 on a flight from Moscow to Siberia and was taken to a hospital in Omsk after the plane had to make an emergency landing.

Following opposition from doctors in Omsk and the Kremlin, Navalny was flown to a hospital in Germany where last week medical professionals said there were indicators he had been poisoned, something Russian doctors back in Minsk had ruled out.

The German government have said they will inform the European Union and NATO of their results and will discuss an 'appropriate joint response’ once Russia has responded to the findings.

Last Friday Navalny’s doctors said there was ‘no immediate danger to his life’ though it ‘remains too early to gauge potential long-term effects’.

He remains in intensive care on a mechanical ventilator and is being treated with atropine - a common treatment for nerve agents and pesticide poisonings.

The novichok family, made up of over 100 different agents, were all created in the 1970s and 80s by the Soviet Union.