No indication Navalny was poisoned

Russian doctors say traces of substance not found as they refuse hospital transfer

Russian doctors treating opposition politician Alexei Navalny say they haven’t found any indication that the Kremlin critic was poisoned.

Deputy chief doctor Anatoly Kalinichenko at Omsk hospital says that as of today, no traces of poison were found in Navalny’s body.

Navalny’s spokesman Kira Yarmysh posted a video on Twitter of Kalinichenko speaking.

“Poisoning as a diagnosis remains on the back burner, but we don’t believe that the patient suffered from poisoning,” Kalinichenko told reporters yesterday.

Kalinichenko added that the diagnosis has been determined and relayed to Navalny’s family members. He refused to reveal it to reporters, citing a law preventing medical workers from disclosing confidential patient information.

Earlier, doctors refused to authorise Navalny’s transfer to a German hospital from the Siberian city of Omsk yesterday.

Navalny, one of President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest critics, remains in a coma in intensive care after a suspected poisoning his allies link to his political activity and believe was engineered by the Kremlin.

“The chief doctor said that Navalny is non-transportable. (His) condition is unstable. Family’s decision to transfer him is not enough,” Yarmysh tweeted.

Omsk is about 4,200km east of Berlin, roughly a six-hour flight.

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. His team says a plane with all the necessary equipment is waiting at Omsk airport to take Navalny to a German clinic.

Navalny’s ally Ivan Zhdanov said yesterday that police found “a very dangerous substance” in Navalny’s system, but officials refuse to disclose which substance it is.

Police officials didn’t confirm it, saying that forensic testing is still ongoing.

Alexander Murakhovsky, chief doctor of the Omsk Ambulance Hospital No. 1 where the politician is being treated, told reporters yesterday that Navalny’s condition “somewhat improved”, but he wasn’t stable enough for a transfer.

Yarmysh also said in her tweet that “the ban on transferring Navalny is needed to stall and wait until the poison in his body can no longer be traced. Yet every hour of stalling creates a threat to his life.”

Like many other opposition politicians in Russia, Navalny has been frequently detained by law enforcement and harassed by pro-Kremlin groups. In 2017, he was attacked by several men who threw antiseptic in his face, damaging an eye.

Last year, Navalny was rushed to a hospital from prison, where he was serving a sentence following an administrative arrest, with what his team said was suspected poisoning. Doctors said he had a severe allergic attack.