Putin critic Alexei Navalny in coma after suspected ‘poisoning’ as doctors work to save his life

Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny is in a coma and on a ventilator in a hospital intensive care unit in Siberia after falling ill from suspected poisoning during a flight, his spokeswoman said Thursday morning. The 44-year-old foe of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin felt unwell on a flight back to Moscow from Tomsk, a city in Siberia, and was taken to a hospital after the plane made an emergency landing in Omsk, Kira Yarmysh said on Twitter. “He is in a coma in grave condition,” she wrote on Twitter. She also told the Echo Moskvy radio station that during the flight Navalny was sweating and asked her to talk to him so that he could “focus on a sound of a voice”. He then went to the bathroom and lost consciousness. Yarmysh said the politician must have consumed something from tea he drank earlier in the morning at an airport cafe before boarding the plane. “Doctors are saying the toxin was absorbed quicker with hot liquid,” she tweeted, adding that Navalny’s team called police to the hospital. Anatoliy Kalinichenko, deputy chief doctor of the Omsk hospital where the politician is being treated, told reporters on Thursday Navalny was in grave yet stable condition. Kalinichenko said doctors are considering a variety of diagnosis, including poisoning, but refused to give details, citing a law preventing doctors from disclosing confidential patient information. “Doctors aren’t just doing everything possible,” he said. “The doctors are really working now on saving his life.” Last year, Navalny was rushed to a hospital from prison where he was serving a sentence following an administrative arrest, with what his team said was suspected poisoning. Doctors then said he had a severe allergic attack and discharged him back to prison the following day. “It’s obvious they have done the same thing now,” Yarmysh said. European Court of Human Rights says Navalny was a political prisoner For its part, the Kremlin said it had heard reports Navalny was ill and wished him well. “We are reading this information ... We know that he is in serious condition ... Like with any citizen of the Russian Federation we wish him a speedy recovery,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists, adding that there was no evidence yet of any poisoning. “As far as we know there are not yet any test results. All assumptions are only assumptions,” he said. “Whether it was a poisoning needs to be confirmed by a laboratory.” Navalny’s Foundation for Fighting Corruption has been exposing corruption among government officials, including some at the highest level. Last month, he had to shut the foundation after a financially devastating lawsuit from Yevgeny Prigozhin, a businessman with close ties to the Kremlin. Belarus’ authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko accused Navalny last week of organising unprecedented mass protests against his re-election that have rocked Russia’s former Soviet neighbour since August 9. He did not, however, provide any evidence and that claim was one of many blaming foreign forces for the unrest. Like many other opposition politicians in Russia, Navalny has been frequently detained by law enforcement and harassed by pro-Kremlin groups. In 2017, he was attacked by several men who threw antiseptic in his face, damaging one eye. The most prominent member of Russia’s opposition, Navalny campaigned to challenge Putin in the 2018 presidential election, but was barred from running. He set up a network of campaign offices across Russia and has since been putting forward opposition candidates in regional elections, challenging members of Russia’s ruling party, United Russia. One of his associates in Khabarovsk, a city in Russia’s Far East that has been engulfed in mass protests against the arrest of the region’s governor, was detained just last week after calling for a strike at a rally. In the interview with Echo Moskvy, Yarmysh said she believed the suspected poisoning was connected to this year’s regional election campaign. Vyacheslav Gimadi, a lawyer with Navalny’s foundation, said the team is requesting Russia’s Investigative Committee open a criminal probe. “There is no doubt that Navalny was poisoned because of his political stance and activity,” Gimadi wrote in a tweet on Thursday. Former US ambassador to Moscow Michael McFaul tweeted: “Praying @navalny will be ok.” Putin opponent Alexei Navalny freed from Russian jail after 30 days inside The European Union’s foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell also expressed concern. “Worried to hear about Alexei Navalny’s @navalny suspected poisoning,” he wrote on Twitter. “If confirmed, those responsible must be held to account. Wishing him a swift and full recovery.” The incident involving the highest-profile opposition figure in Russia follows other poisonings of Kremlin critics in and outside the country. In 2006, former Russian security service agent Alexander Litvinenko was fatally poisoned with radioactive polonium in a cup of tea in London. Russia refused to extradite chief suspect Andrei Lugovoi, who became a nationalist MP. In 2018, Pyotr Verzilov, a member of Russia’s protest group Pussy Riot, ended up in an intensive care unit after a suspected poisoning and had to be flown to Berlin for treatment. Opposition activist Vladimir Kara-Murza was hospitalised with poisoning symptoms twice – in 2015 and 2017. Both said they believed they were poisoned for their political activity. Britain named two Russian military intelligence agents as suspects after Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned with nerve agent Novichok in the city of Salisbury in March 2018. Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse, dpa