Leading Putin foe may have been poisoned
MOSCOW — Groaning in agony from a suspected poisoning before losing consciousness, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was rushed to a Siberian hospital Thursday after the plane he was flying on made an emergency landing because of his sudden illness.
Doctors at the No. 1 Clinical Hospital in Omsk, the Siberian city where the plane landed, initially said that Navalny, a fierce critic of President Vladimir Putin, was on a ventilator in “serious condition” but later reported that his condition, though still grave, had stabilized.
Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told journalists that the Kremlin
wished Navalny a swift recovery, “as we would for any citizen of Russia,” and would, if asked, provide help to get the opposition leader transferred to a hospital abroad.
Navalny, who often refers to Putin as the head of “a party of crooks and thieves,” is the latest in a long line of Kremlin opponents to be suddenly afflicted by bizarre and sometimes fatal medical emergencies. The Kremlin and its supporters have for years regarded him as an enemy because of the investigations he has led into graft by officials — including former Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.
Navalny’s spokeswoman, Kira
Yarmysh, who was traveling with the anti-corruption campaigner on a flight destined for Moscow from Tomsk, said on Twitter, “We assume that Alexei was poisoned with something mixed with his tea.”
Pavel Lebedev, a passenger who posted a picture of Navalny drinking tea at the airport before departure, said on Instagram that the opposition activist “went to the toilet at the beginning of the flight and didn’t return. He started feeling very bad. They could barely revive him and he’s still crying out in pain.”
The state-owned news agency Tass quoted an unidentified law enforcement source as saying that authorities were not yet considering the possibility of a deliberate poisoning. It said that Navalny could have “taken something himself ” before boarding the plane.
Yarmysh responded on Twitter, “If law enforcement agencies are not looking into intentional poisoning, why are there so many cops in the hospital?”
Anatoly Kalinichenko, a doctor at the Omsk hospital who was interviewed by state television, said poisoning was being considered as a possible cause of Navalny’s sudden illness.
Before boarding his flight in Tomsk on Thursday, Navalny met with opposition candidates in a coming election for the local council. He arrived in Tomsk from Novosibirsk, Siberia’s largest city, where he had met with his supporters and discussed plans to field independent candidates in a city council election next month.
A Siberian news outlet, Taiga, reported that Navalny had also filmed an investigative report for his Anti-Corruption Foundation on local officials affiliated with United Russia, a Kremlin-backed political party that dominates most regional parliaments in Russia as well as the national parliament.
Last year, Navalny was hospitalized with a “severe allergic reaction” in jail, which his doctor at the time suggested could have been the result of a poisoning, after he was detained for leading an unauthorized election protest.
Navalny was doused with a bright green liquid in the Siberian city of Barnaul in 2017 by an assailant. Navalny later said he suffered a chemical burn and lost 80 percent of the sight in one eye.