Berlin: According to the Welt am Sonntag, German police have launched an investigation after a Russian journalist and an activist who attended a conference in Berlin reported experiencing health issues that might have been caused by poisoning.

"A file has been opened based on the information available," a Berlin police spokesman told the Sunday magazine. Berlin police were unavailable to respond to AFP right away.

A report on the health issues two attendees at a meeting of Russian dissidents on April 29 and 30 was published this week by the Russian investigative media outlet Agentstvo, which is run by exiled former oligarch turned Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

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Unspecified symptoms were reported by one participant, a journalist who had recently left Russia, who claimed they may have started earlier.

The journalist visited the same Berlin hospital where Putin critic Alexei Navalny received treatment after being poisoned in August 2020, according to the report.

Natalia Arno, who runs the non-profit organisation Free Russia Foundation in the United States and has lived there for ten years after being forced to flee Russia, was the second participant to be mentioned.

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Before leaving for Prague at the end of April, Arno was in Berlin. Once there, she experienced symptoms and found that her hotel room had been broken into, according to Agentstvo.

She contacted a hospital there as well as the authorities before departing for the United States the following day.

This week, Arno posted on Facebook about the "sharp pain" and "numbness" she has been experiencing, claiming the first "strange symptoms" started before she left for Prague. She claimed that while her symptoms persisted, she felt better.

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Numerous poisonings of Kremlin rivals have been carried out recently in Russia and abroad. Moscow disputes the involvement of its secret services. Navalny was poisoned with Novichok, a nerve agent produced by the Soviet Union, according to European laboratories.