The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Doctors allow Putin critic Navalny to be flown abroad for treatment
Russian doctors have given a dissident who is in a coma after a suspected poisoning permission to be transferred abroad for medical treatment, a senior medic said.
The reversal came after more than 24 hours of wrangling over Alexei Navalny’s condition and treatment.
Mr Navalny, a 44-year-old politician and corruption investigator who is one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest critics, was admitted to an intensive care unit in the Siberian city Omsk on Thursday.
His supporters believe he was poisoned and that the Kremlin is behind it.
His family and supporters wanted him brought to a top German medical clinic, but his doctors in Omsk said he was too unstable to move, even after a plane with German specialists and advanced equipment arrived.
Mr Navalny’s supporters denounced that as a ploy by authorities to stall until any poison would no longer be traceable in his system.
A senior doctor in Omsk said the team did not believe he was poisoned.
The German doctors later examined Mr Navalny and said he was fit to be transported, according to a representative of the charity that has organised the plane to bring him to
Berlin.
“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,” film producer Jaka Bizilj, of Cinema For Peace, said.
Mr Navalny fell ill on a flight back to Moscow from Siberia on Thursday.
The Kremlin denied resistance to the transfer had been political.