The seriously ill Kremlin critic Alexej Navalny is on his way to Germany. Early on Saturday morning, an ambulance took off from Omsk airport for Berlin with the comatose Russian opposition politician on board. There Navalny is to be treated in the Charité. The anti-corruption activist’s family and employees believe that he was poisoned.
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“The plane with Alexej is on the way to Berlin,” wrote Nawalny’s spokeswoman Kira Jarmysch on Twitter. “The struggle for Alexei’s life and health has only just begun and there is still a lot to be done, but at least the first step has now been taken,” she added. Jarmysch thanked the supporters of the opposition politician.
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Navalny’s wife Julia Navalnaya was also on board the rescue plane chartered by the Cinema for Peace initiative. The doctors in Omsk had allowed Navalnys to be transported to Germany on Friday evening. A few hours earlier, they had refused on the grounds that the 44-year-old’s condition was not stable enough. However, German doctors who were able to examine Navalny had contradicted this.
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The anti-corruption activist and prominent critic of the Russian President Wladimir Putin was admitted to the Omsk hospital on Thursday after losing consciousness on a flight to Moscow. Nawalny’s circle assumes that he was poisoned. The doctors in Omsk, however, had stated that they had not found any poison in Navalny’s body. According to their own statements, they assumed that the patient had a “metabolic disorder”.
Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) had one on Thursday Treatment offered by Nawalnys in a German hospital. On Friday, Julia Navalnaya officially wrote a letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin to allow her husband to be transported to Germany.
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“Strong suspicion” of a poison attack
Navalny’s Foundation has repeatedly exposed cases of corruption and the decadent lifestyle of members of the Russian elite in recent years. Most recently, the opposition politician was on an election campaign tour through the country to prevent the victory of pro-government candidates in regional elections in September. Navalny has been arrested repeatedly in the past, and there have been multiple physical attacks on him.
The CDU foreign politician Norbert Röttgen believes a poison attack on Navalny is likely. In the past there have been “a whole series of murders, attempted murders and also fatal poisonings in the responsibility of the Russian state,” said Röttgen of the “Passauer Neue Presse” on Saturday. “There is strong suspicion that this is another attack on a Russian opposition member.”
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