Opposition leader in Russia Alexei Navalny is in intensive care at a hospital in Siberia after apparently being poisoned, his spokesman Kira Yarmish said on Twitter on Thursday.
A medical plane dispatched by the German NGO “Cinema for Peace” left Germany for Russia, to repatriate him so that he could be taken care of in the Berlin Charité hospital.
The opponent was on a flight from Siberia to Moscow when the plane had to land urgently due to the sudden deterioration in his health. His spokesperson suggested that “he had been poisoned with something mixed with his tea”, as he had not drunk anything else in the morning.
Anatoly Kalinichenko, the deputy director of the emergency hospital No.1 in Omsk in Siberia, where Alexei Navalny was placed in intensive care, declared that the opponent’s condition was “stable”, stressing nevertheless, that ‘it was too early to confirm the poisoning thesis.
A 44-year-old lawyer by training, Alexei Navalny is the Kremlin’s No.1 opponent with anti-corruption posts that are widely shared on social media.
His trip through Russia aimed to promote his electoral strategy in anticipation of regional elections to be held in around 30 regions in September.
He has already been targeted by physical attacks in the past, and had in particular been sprayed in the eyes with a disinfectant product when he left his office in 2017. He, his supporters and their families are regularly the subject of arrests, searches and police pressure all over Russia.
Many other Russian opponents have been victims of poisoning in recent years, in Russia or abroad, such as the ex-double agent and his daughter Sergei and Yulia Skripal in March 2018 in England, or the ex-agent Russian secret in exile Alexander Litvinienko, who died of polonium-210 poisoning in 2006.
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