Russia allows dissident to get treatment in Berlin
MOSCOW — Russian doctors gave a dissident who is in a coma after a suspected poisoning permission to be transferred abroad for medical treatment, a senior physician said Friday. The reversal came after more than 24 hours of wrangling over Alexei Navalny’s condition and treatment.
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 of Omsk on Thursday. His supporters believe he was poisoned and that the Kremlin was behind it. His family and supporters wanted him brought to a top German medical clinic, but his physicians in Omsk initially said he was too unstable to move, even after a plane with German specialists and advanced equipment arrived.
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 does not believe he was poisoned.
The German doctors later examined Navalny and said he was fit to be transported, according to a representative of the charity that has organized 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 after being in contact with the German doctors.
The Russian medical team eventually relented, and Anatoly Kalinichenko, deputy chief doctor of the Omsk hospital, told reporters on Friday that Navalny would be allowed to leave.
The flight was scheduled for Saturday morning, Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency reported.
Earlier, a Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied the resistance to the transfer was political. He said he wasn’t aware of any instructions to stop the transfer and that it was purely a medical decision.
“It may pose a threat to his health,” Peskov said.
Navalny's team made arrangements to transfer him to Charite, a clinic in Berlin that has a history of treating famous foreign leaders and dissidents, and insisted that the transfer is paramount to saving the politician’s life.
Navalny’s wife told reporters that hospital staff in Omsk and men she suspected were law enforcement agents didn’t let her speak to the German specialists, who she said were brought into the facility in secrecy, through a back door.
“I was forcibly kicked out in a rude manner,” Yulia Navalnaya said, her voice shaking. “This is an appalling situation.”
Navalny campaigned to challenge Putin in the 2018 presidential election but was barred from running. Since then, he has been promoting opposition candidates in regional elections, challenging members of the ruling party, United Russia.
Navalny fell ill on a flight back to Moscow from Siberia on Thursday and was taken to the hospital after the plane made an emergency landing. The hospital’s chief doctor, Alexander Murakhovsky, said a metabolic disorder was the most likely diagnosis.