Putin rival too ill to be moved, doctors claim

FAMILY and allies of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who remains in a coma in a Siberian hospital, are fighting for his transfer to a German clinic. It comes as local doctors insisted the 44-year-old is too unstable to be evacuated and refused to give authorisation for the transfer.

Navalny, one of President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest critics, was admitted to an intensive care unit in a coma at a hospital in the Siberian city of Omsk on Thursday, following what his supporters are calling a suspected poisoning that they believe was engineered by the Kremlin.

A plane with German specialists and all the necessary equipment landed at Omsk airport on Friday morning, prepared to take Navalny to a clinic in Berlin.

But doctors treating the politician said his condition was too unstable to transport him and bristled at the idea of consulting with German specialists, saying that doctors that flew in from Moscow overnight were competent enough.

Omsk hospital deputy chief doctor Anatoly Kalinichenko said that no traces of poison were found in Navalny’s body.

“Poisoning as a diagnosis remains on the back burner, but we don’t believe that the patient suffered from poisoning,” Kalinichenko told reporters.

Kalinichenko added that a diagnosis has been determined and relayed to Navalny’s family members.He refused to reveal it to reporters, citing a law preventing medical workers from disclosing confidential patient information.

Navalny’s spokesperson Kira Yarmysh tweeted that the politician’s family was not given a diagnosis, but rather “a range of symptoms that can be interpreted differently”.