Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Fight to get Navalny to Germany
Politician and corruption buster in coma after alleged poisoning
THE family and allies of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who has been in a coma for a day, were fighting yesterday to get him flown to a top German medical facility from a Siberian hospital, but local doctors refused to authorise the transfer.
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 a coma in the Siberian city of Omsk on Thursday, following what his supporters are calling a suspected poisoning that they believe was engineered by the Kremlin.
A plane with German specialists and the necessary equipment landed at Omsk airport yesterday morning, prepared to take Navalny to a top clinic in Berlin. But doctors at the hospital said his condition was too unstable to transport him.
Navalny’s supporters denounced the medical verdict as a ploy by the authorities to “stall and wait” until the suspected poison no longer is traceable in his system. But a chief doctor in Omsk said the physicians who are treating Navalny didn’t “believe the patient suffered from poisoning”.
Omsk hospital deputy chief doctor Anatoly Kalinichenko said no traces of poison were found in the politician’s body and doctors didn’t “believe the patient suffered from poisoning”. Omsk news outlet NGS55 published a video statement of the hospital’s chief doctor, Alexander Murakhovsky, saying that a metabolic disorder was the most likely diagnosis.
“It may have been prompted by a sharp plunge in blood sugar on the plane, which caused the loss of consciousness,” he said in the video.
Meanwhile, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said he was not aware of any instructions to stop the transfer and that it was purely a medical decision that doctors made based on Navalny’s condition.
“It may pose a threat to his health.” Leonid Volkov, a close associate of Navalny, confirmed that the German doctors from Nuremberg were allowed access to him later in the day.
Volkov said even though that was good news, Navalny’s family and allies were still lacking any reliable “independent data” on his condition and were standing by their demand that he needs to be brought to Germany for examination.
Navalny fell ill on a flight back to Moscow from the Siberian city of Tomsk on Thursday and was taken to the hospital after the plane made an emergency landing in Omsk.
His team made arrangements to transfer him to Charité, a clinic in Berlin that has a history of treating famous foreign leaders and insisted that the transfer is paramount to saving the politician’s life.
Navalny’s wife Yulia submitted a written request to Putin yesterday demanding him to allow the transfer.
The most prominent member of Russia’s opposition, Navalny campaigned to challenge Putin in the 2018 presidential election, but was barred from running. His Foundation for Fighting Corruption has been exposing graft among government officials, including some at the highest level.
Last month, he had to shut the foundation after a financially devastating lawsuit from Yevgeny
Prigozhin, a businessman with close ties to the Kremlin.
European Union spokesperson Nabila Massrali said yesterday the 27-nation bloc expects “a swift, independent, transparent investigation” into what caused Navalny’s condition.
The EU and urged Russian authorities to “stand by their promises to allow Mr Navalny to be safely and speedily transferred abroad in order to receive medical treatment in line with the wishes of his family,” she said.