The longtime Putin foe was raced to a Siberian hospital after a plane he was in made an emergency landing.
Russian opposition leader, one of Vladimir Putin’s fiercest critics, lay in a coma Friday at a Siberian hospital after what his allies said appeared to be a poisoning engineered by the Kremlin. The 44-year-old Navalny fell ill on a flight back to Moscow from the Siberian city of Tomsk on Thursday and was taken to a hospital after the plane made an emergency landing in Omsk, Navalny’s spokeswoman, Kira Yarmysh, said on Twitter. She told the Echo Moskvy radio station that he must have consumed poison in tea he drank at an airport cafe before boarding the plane early Thursday. During the flight, Navalny started sweating and asked her to talk to him so that he could «focus on the sound of a voice.» He then went to the bathroom and lost consciousness, and has been in a coma and on a ventilator in grave condition ever since. Navalny’s organization is scrambling to make arrangements to transfer him to Germany for treatment. A German group said it was ready to send a plane for him and that a noted hospital in Berlin was ready to treat him. In a video statement released early Friday in Omsk, Yarmysh said Navalny remained in critical condition. She called on the hospital’s leadership «not to obstruct us from providing all necessary documents for his transfer.» Other opposition figures were quick to suggest Kremlin involvement. «We are sure that the only people that have the capability to target Navalny or myself are Russian security services with definite clearance from Russia’s political leadership,» Pyotr Verzilov, a member of the protest group Pussy Riot who after a suspected poisoning in 2018, told The Associated Press. «We believe that Putin definitely is a person who gives that go-ahead in this situation.» Jaka Bizilj, of the German organization that arranged for Verzilov’s treatment in Germany, said that at Verzilov’s request «we will send at midnight an air ambulance with medical equipment and specialists with which Navalny can be brought to Germany.» Omsk is about 2,500 miles east of Berlin, roughly a six-hour flight. Doctors at Omsk Ambulance Hospital No.
