Russian anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny, one of the main opponents of President Vladimir Putin, is in hospital “in intensive care”, his spokesman said on Twitter on Thursday 20 August. “We assume that Alexei was poisoned,” she wrote, saying Navalny first “felt bad” on a plane and has since lost consciousness. He was placed on artificial respiration, she added.
The state news agency Tass confirmed that Navalny was admitted to the intensive care unit of the toxicology department of the emergency department of the Omsk hospital in Omsk, Siberia. But one of the hospital’s doctors, Anatoly Kalinichenko, said he was not sure whether the opponent was deliberately poisoned, and that the hypothesis of “natural poisoning” was also being investigated. The tests are still ongoing, he said.
Last year, the opponent had already reported suspicions of poisoning against him, which were denied by a doctor while he was in detention. “Obviously they did the same to him,” spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh wrote again on Thursday.
Her plane made an emergency landing in Omsk…
“This morning, Navalny was returning to Moscow from Tomsk,” she explains. Tomsk is located in Western Siberia, 3,600 km east of Moscow. “During the flight, he felt bad. The plane landed urgently in Omsk”, also located in Siberia, the spokeswoman explained. “We assume that Alexei was poisoned with something mixed in the tea,” the “only thing” he drank on Thursday morning, she added.
A photo published on Instagram shows Alexei Navalny, apparently in good health, drinking a hot beverage at Tomsk airport. The same account published three hours later a video, filmed on an airplane, in which the cries of pain of a man he portrays as the Russian opponent can be heard.
On Twitter, Yarmysh accused doctors at the Omsk hospital of delaying the results of tests on Navalny. “The doctors’ evasive reaction only confirms that it was poisoning,” the spokeswoman said. “Two hours ago they were willing to share any information, but now they’re clearly playing for time and not saying what they know.”
A figure repeatedly attacked
The 44-year-old lawyer, whose anti-corruption publications are widely shared on social networks, has suffered physical attacks in the past. In particular, he was sprayed in the eyes with a disinfectant as he left his office in 2017.
Alexei Navalny, his supporters and their families are regularly subjected to arrests, searches, and police pressure throughout Russia. His candidacy for the 2018 presidential election had been rejected due to a previous conviction.
Source: Francetvinfo
