German group offers flight to Putin critic

Russian president had rival poisoned in Siberia, opposition figures allege

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, one of Vladimir Putin’s fiercest critics, lay in a coma Friday at a Siberian hospital, the victim of what his allies said appeared to be a poisoning engineered by the Kremlin.

Navalny’s organization was scrambling to make arrangements to transfer him to Germany for treatment; a German group said it was ready to send a plane for him and that a noted hospital in Berlin was ready to treat him.

The 44-year-old Navalny fell ill on a flight back to Moscow from the Siberian city of Tomsk on Thursday and was taken to a hospital after the plane made an emergency landing in Omsk, Navalny’s spokesperson, Kira Yarmysh, said on Twitter.

She told the Echo Moskvy radio station that he must have consumed poison in tea he drank at an airport café before boarding the plane early Thursday. During the flight, Navalny started sweating and asked her to talk to him so that he could “focus on the sound of a voice.” He then went to the bathroom and lost consciousness, and has been in a coma and on a ventilator in grave condition ever since.

In a video statement released early Friday in Omsk, Yarmysh said Navalny remained in critical condition and she called on the hospital’s leadership “not to obstruct us from providing all necessary documents for his transfer.” It was not clear what the possible obstructions could be.

Other opposition figures were quick to suggest Kremlin involvement.

“We are sure that the only people that have the capability to target Navalny or myself are Russian security services with definite clearance from Russia’s political leadership,” Pyotr Verzilov, a member of the protest group Pussy Riot who ended up in intensive care after suspected poisoning in 2018, told The Associated Press. “We believe that Putin definitely is a person who gives that go-ahead in this situation.”

Doctors at Omsk Ambulance Hospital No. 1, where the politician was being treated, remained tight-lipped about his diagnosis saying only that they were considering a variety of theories, including poisoning. Local health officials said they found no indication that Navalny had suffered from a heart attack, stroke or the coronavirus.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said it was necessary to wait for test results showing what caused Navalny’s condition, adding the authorities would consider a request to allow Navalny to leave Russia, which has not fully opened its borders after a coronavirus lockdown, for treatment.