MOSCOW — A plane carrying Russian dissident Alexei Navalny who is in a coma after a suspected poisoning touched down Saturd
MOSCOW — A plane carrying Russian dissident Alexei Navalny, who is in a coma after a suspected poisoning, touched down Saturday morning in Berlin, where he will receive medical attention at Charite Clinic, the city’s main hospital. Russian doctors announced earlier they had acquiesced to demands to allow Navalny medical treatment in Germany — ending a standoff over who would administer care to the politician following what Navanly’s family says was a deliberate attempt to poison him in Siberia earlier this week. «The patient’s condition is stable,» Dr. Anatoly Kalinichenko of Hospital No.1 in the city of Omsk, where Navalny has been in a medically induced coma and ventilator, said Friday. «As we are in possession of a request from relatives to permit him to be transported, we have now taken the decision that we do not object to his transfer to another in-patient facility,» he added. Kalinichenko also said that «having received the request from relatives for transportation,» Navalny’s family would take «full responsibility.» The decision capped a day of seesawing as local Russian doctors initially concluded it was too dangerous to move Navalny only to change their minds amid public outcry. That came after Navalny’s wife, Yulia Navalnaya, issued a public appeal online to Russian President Vladimir Putin to facilitate the move. Navalny’s supporters also argued any delay in a medical evacuation put his survival at risk — and, perhaps, put off discovering what had felled the politician so suddenly.
