Last week, we reported that Pyotr Verzilov, a member of Russian punk band/art collective Pussy Riot, had fallen mysteriously ill after a court appearance stemming from the group’s on-field World Cup protest earlier this summer, with the group reporting that doctors believed Verzilov—who had quickly become unable to see, talk, or walk—had been poisoned. Today, Pussy Riot released a statement about Verzilov’s condition, saying that he had been transferred to a hospital in Berlin and that the doctors had indeed concluded that he was poisoned.
According to the statement, Verzilov is “still disoriented” and “not fully with us,” and he’s suffering from some kind of short-term amnesia. He couldn’t recognize his family when they first brought him to the hospital, and while that’s no longer the case, Verzilov still “does not understand that he’s in Germany” and believes he’s in some kind of prison surrounded by wardens. The doctors say that Verzilov’s condition is reversible, and that all of his symptoms “look exactly like effects of poisoning by anticholinergic agent.”
That’s good news, because the doctors seem to know what happened and can treat Verzilov, but the bad part is that these anticholinergic drugs—which the Pussy Riot statement calls “date rape drugs”—are designed to only stay in a victim’s body for a short period of time. That means the doctors might not be able to determine exactly what Verzilov was poisoned with, so it’ll be difficult to determine how he was poisoned in the first place.
Either way, Pussy Riot is happy to have Verzilov out of Russia, as they very firmly believe that he was poisoned by the Russian government and that the Russian doctors may not have really been trying to help him. The statement even notes that Verzilov was physically tied to his hospital bed when he was in Moscow, which may explain why he now thinks he’s in a Russian prison.