‘Poisoned’ Putin foe to be f lown to Berlin
A KREMLIN critic in a coma after drinking a cup of ‘poisoned’ tea will be airlifted to Germany for treatment today.
Doctors in Siberia claimed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny had been left fighting for his life due to ‘low blood sugar’.
But his allies rejected the diagnosis and sought international help, saying they were being thwarted from getting to the truth behind Mr Navalny’s sudden collapse.
His wife Yulia wrote a letter to Vladimir Putin, demanding that the president allow her husband to be flown to Berlin for treatment before lodging an appeal with the European Court of Human Rights. Mrs Navalnaya said her husband was in a ‘serious condition’ and needed ‘qualified medical assistance’.
After a day of negotiations, doctors at the hospital in Omsk, a city close to Russia’s border with Kazakhstan, agreed Mr Navalny could be transferred to an air ambulance waiting to take him to Germany.
Mr Navalny, 44, has been in an induced coma since falling ill on a flight from Tomsk, Siberia, to Moscow, which forced the plane to make an emergency landing on Thursday
‘We cannot trust this hospital’
morning. The only thing he consumed that day was a cup of black tea at the airport, said his spokesman, who was travelling with him.
Doctors treating Mr Navalny said they had found ‘no trace’ of any poison. They did find industrial chemicals on his hands, hair and clothes, but were not linking them to his illness.
Deputy head doctor Anatoly Kalinichenko said: ‘Poisoning as a diagnosis remains on the back burner, but we don’t believe that the patient suffered from poisoning.’
Head doctor Alexander Murakhovsky announced a preliminary diagnosis of a ‘metabolic disorder caused by low blood sugar’.
The Cinema for Peace Foundation, a Berlin-based group, sent an air ambulance complete with medical equipment and doctors who specialise in caring for coma patients, to take Mr Navalny to the German capital for treatment.
‘I understand he’s still unconscious, but they’re used to such special assignments and they say very clearly he can fly and they want to fly him,’ Jaka Bizilj, of Cinema For Peace, said after being in contact with the German doctors.
The Kremlin said the block on Mr Navalny travelling was purely a medical decision and that he was too ill to make the journey.
But Mrs Navalnaya said the delay was to allow the poison to leave his system, telling reporters: ‘We certainly believe that it is done to make sure that a chemical substance which is in Alexei’s body will dissolve. We cannot trust this hospital.’
Ivan Zhdanov, an ally of Mr Navalny, said a police official had told him they had found a ‘deadly substance’ in his blood. But a police source quoted by the Russian state news agency said they could not rule out Mr Navalny having taken something poisonous himself.
Mr Navalny is a leading critic of Putin and has long campaigned against corruption. Last year his Anti-Corruption Foundation was declared a ‘foreign agent’ by the Kremlin, meaning it faced tougher checks from the authorities.