Putin critic Navalny flown to Berlin, in ‘stable’ condition
Russia’s oppn leader and top activist collapsed on a plane on Thursday and went into coma
BERLIN: Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, who has suffered a suspected poisoning, was in a stable condition in hospital on Saturday after being flown to Berlin following a standoff over his medical evacuation from Russia.
A convoy including two yellow ambulances brought Navalny from Berlin’s Tegel airport to the renowned Charite hospital just after 10.20am local time.
“Navalny’s condition is stable,” Jaka Bizilj, the head of the Cinema for Peace foundation that brought Navalny to Germany in a chartered medical plane, told AFP. Berlin’s Charite hospital confirmed that it had admitted Navalny and was carrying out an “extensive medical diagnosis”.
The 44-year-old lawyer and anti-corruption campaigner, one of President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest critics, went into a coma after falling suddenly ill on
Thursday on a plane to Moscow that had to make an emergency landing in Omsk.
Aides say they believe Navalny was poisoned, apparently via a cup of tea at the airport, and blamed Putin, though Russian doctors said tests showed no trace of any poison.
Doctors treating him in Omsk had refused to let Navalny leave but reversed course after his family and staff demanded he be allowed to travel to Germany.
As the plane left Omsk, Navalny’s wife Yulia thanked supporters via Instagram for their “persistence”.
“Without your support, we wouldn’t have been able to take him!” she wrote.
The Omsk regional health ministry said Saturday that both caffeine and alcohol were found in Navalny’s urine, but “no convulsive or synthetic poisons were detected”.
Navalny’s spokesman Kira Yarmysh said he had neither drunk alcohol nor taken any medication.
The air ambulance arrived in Omsk on Friday but Russian doctors initially said Navalny was too “unstable” to be moved, before relenting later that day.
Navalny’s wife had appealed directly to Putin to let him leave, while his aides asked the European Court of Human Rights to intervene.
Human rights group Cinema for Peace financed the medical transport with private money, although its chief Bizilj would not reveal the list of donors it cobbled together at the last minute.
Navalny is the latest in a long line of Kremlin critics who have fallen seriously ill or died in apparent poisonings.
His wife told journalists that she wanted Navalny to be “in an independent hospital, whose doctors we trust”. Yarmysh tweeted “the battle for Alexei’s life and health is beginning... but at least now we’ve taken the first step.”
Navalny had lost consciousness shortly after his plane had taken off on Thursday from Tomsk in Siberia, where he was working to support opposition candidates ahead of regional elections next month.