Dmitry Kovtun, a contact of poisoned Russian ex-FSB agent Alexander Litvinenko, is in satisfactory health and media reports he is in critical condition are wrong, a lawyer told Reuters on Thursday.

Russia’s Interfax news agency reported earlier that Kovtun, who met Litvinenko in London on the day he fell ill, was in a coma from radiation poisoning.

“Doctors have classified Kovtun’s condition as critical,” Interfax quoted its source as saying.

The news agency also reported that Kovtun fell into a coma after British and Russian investigators working on the Litvinenko case had finished questioning him in a Moscow hospital.

“I just 15 minutes ago spoke to his (Kovtun’s) representative, who had spoken directly to him and he denied that information,” said Andrei Romashov, a lawyer for Andrei Lugovoy, another witness in the Litvinenko case.

“His health right at this minute is no different from the state of his health when he was questioned by Russian and British investigators (on Thursday),” Romashov told Reuters.

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