Russia lets dissident get treated in Berlin
MOSCOW — Russian doctors gave a dissident who is in a coma after a suspected poisoning permission to be transferred abroad for medical treatment in a sudden reversal Friday that came after more than 24 hours of wrangling over Alexei Navalny’s condition and treatment.
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 the Siberian city of Omsk on Thursday. His supporters believe that tea he drank was laced with poison — and that the Kremlin is behind both his illness and the delay in transferring him to a top German hospital. It would not be the first time a prominent, outspoken Russian was targeted in such a way — or the first time the Kremlin was accused of being behind it.
Russian doctors say there is no evidence of poisoning, and the Kremlin denied the authorities tried to prevent the transfer from happening.
Even after German specialists arrived on a plane equipped with advanced medical equipment Friday morning at his family’s behest, Navalny’s physicians in Omsk said he was too unstable to move.
Navalny’s supporters denounced that as a ploy by authorities to stall until any poison in his system would no longer be traceable. The Omsk medical team relented only after a charity that had organized the medevac plane revealed that the German doctors examined the politician and said he was fit to be transported.
Deputy chief doctor of the Omsk hospital Anatoly Kalinichenko then told reporters that Navalny’s condition had stabilized and that physicians “didn’t mind” transferring the politician, given that his relatives were willing “to take on the risks.”
According to Russia’s RIA Novosti
news agency, the flight to Berlin is scheduled for Saturday morning.
The most prominent member of Russia’s opposition, Navalny campaigned to challenge Putin in the 2018 presidential election but was barred from running. Since then, he has been promoting opposition candidates in regional elections, challenging members of the ruling party, United Russia.
Navalny fell ill on a flight back to Moscow from Siberia on Thursday and was taken to the hospital after the plane made an emergency landing. His team made arrangements to transfer him to
Charite, a clinic in Berlin that has a history of treating famous foreign leaders and dissidents.
While his supporters and family members continue to insist that Navalny was poisoned, doctors in Omsk denied that and put forth another theory.
The hospital’s chief doctor, Alexander Murakhovsky, said in a video published by Omsk news outlet NGS55 that a metabolic disorder was the most likely diagnosis and that a drop in blood sugar may have caused Navalny to lose consciousness.
Another doctor with ties to the politician, Dr. Anastasia Vasilyeva, said that diagnosing Navalny with a “metabolic disorder” says nothing about what may have caused it — and it could have been the result of a poisoning.
Ashikhmin, who’s been Navalny’s doctor since 2013, said the politician has always been in good health, regularly went for medical checkups and didn’t have any underlying illnesses that could have triggered his condition.