Russian opposition leader and outspoken Kremlin critic Alexey Navalny was unconscious and on a ventilator in a hospital Thursday in Siberia after falling ill from suspected poisoning, his spokesperson said.
“We assume that Alexey was poisoned with something mixed into the tea. It was the only thing that he drank in the morning. Doctors say the toxin was absorbed faster through the hot liquid,” Yarmysh tweeted. Loud groaning can be heard in video footage apparently filmed on the flight taken by Navalny, which was shared on the Baza Telegram channel. More video apparently filmed through the airplane window shows an immobile man being taken by wheeled stretcher to a waiting ambulance. Navalny has been admitted to the acute poisoning unit of Omsk emergency hospital No.1 and is in a “serious condition,” hospital head physician Alexander Murakhovsky said, according to Russian state news agency TASS. The hospital’s deputy head physician, Anatoly Kalinichenko, speaking to local journalists, later confirmed that Navalny was still in the hospital in a serious condition. He was on a ventilator but was stable, the physician said. Asked by a reporter if Navalny had been poisoned, Kalinichenko said: “Naturally, poisoning is considered as one of the possible reasons for the deterioration of his state. But apart from this, this could be a number of conditions that started acutely and led to the same clinical reactions. We are working on all of them: excluding, confirming.” Kalinichenko said he believed doctors would have a diagnosis later Thursday. In the meantime, Navalny’s symptoms are being treated, he said. Yarmysh tweeted a video of the news conference, saying Kalinichenko had confirmed what was already known. “He said the same: stable serious condition, coma, ventilator. Does not say anything about the diagnosis or whether there is a threat to life,” she said. In an earlier tweet, Yarmysh said the intensive care unit was full of police officers. “They try to get an explanation from the doctor. The doctor saw me in the distance in the corridor, said that ‘some things are confidential’ and took the police to another room,” Yarmysh said. “The evasive reaction of doctors only confirms that this is poisoning,” Yarmysh added. Yarmysh later tweeted that Navalny’s wife, Yulia Navalnaya, had not been not allowed to see him in the intensive care unit, because “a passport is not a guarantee that they are married, but for confirmation they require a marriage certificate.” She said the politician’s wife had also been told that “the patient did not give his consent to a visit.” Kremlin: ‘We wish him a speedy recovery’ Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the Kremlin was aware of media reports about Navalny’s hospitalization.
