Russian mayor of Kherson in hospital after suspected poisoning

‘Five months non-stop under bullets. The man was simply overtired. The diagnosis is fatigue’

THE Russian-appointed mayor of Kherson was poisoned by a chef who was brought into his household a day before he fell ill, Russian opposition media has reported.

The Baza news agency, which reports from exile in Europe, reported on Aug 3 that Volodymyr Saldo “became ill, his mind began to cloud and his fingertips went numb” after he ate food prepared by the chef.

Mr Saldo was rushed to a hospital in Simferopol, Crimea, 170 miles south of Kherson, where doctors put him in a coma and then flew him to Moscow. He is now on a ventilator in the Sklifosovsky Research Institute of Emergency Medicine.

Doctors are waiting for Mr Saldo’s toxicology reports although regional officials denied he had been poisoned.

“Five months non-stop under bullets. The man was simply overtired. The diagnosis is fatigue,” said Kirill Stremousov, deputy head of the Kherson administration.

Ukrainian partisans have targeted pro-russia collaborators in the Kherson region, which Russian forces captured without a fight in the first days of their invasion of Ukraine in February.

Assassins have killed at least three senior regional officials in Kherson, including the deputy mayor of the town of Nova Khakhova who was shot dead at the weekend.

Ukrainian forces are planning an offensive to retake Kherson region and the assassination of collaborating officials will disrupt Russian defence plans. Previously, Kremlin critics have accused Vladimir Putin of killing his enemies with poison. In Italy, Anatoly Chubais, the Kremlin insider who fled Moscow when Russia invaded Ukraine, left hospital a week after being admitted for suspected poisoning.

Doctors at the Mater Olbia Hospital in Sardinia have not released Mr Chubais’ toxicology results. He was diagnosed as suffering from Guillain-barré syndrome, a disease caused by the immune system attacking the nervous system.

“He feels better,” doctors told the La Repubblica newspaper, which reported that Mr Chubais had walked out of the hospital unassisted and then taken a flight to Frankfurt where he intended to check into a rehabilitation clinic.

Mr Chubais, 67, was a deputy prime minister in the 1990s and is credited with pushing through liberal economic reforms that sold off key ex-soviet industries. He was Mr Putin’s climate change envoy and is regarded as the highest-ranked Kremlin official to leave Russia since the start of the war.

Despite rumours of discontent over the invasion of Ukraine, most Russian officials have towed the Kremlin’s line and remained in Russia.

Mr Chubais has been careful not to criticise the Kremlin since he left Moscow but Mr Putin has still described Russians who fled as “traitors”.