Russian dissident Alexei Navalny, who is in a coma after an alleged poisoning, arrived in Berlin on Saturday on a special flight to be treated by specialists at the main hospital in the German capital.
“Navalny is in Berlin,” Jaka Bizilj of Cinema for Peace, the German organization that organized the move, told The Associated Press. “She survived the flight and is stable.”
After landing shortly before 09:00 in a special area of Berlin’s Tegel Airport used for government and military flights, Navalny was taken by ambulance to the Charite hospital in the city center.
Doctors were subjecting the politician to extensive tests, the hospital later explained in a statement, adding that doctors will not comment on his illness or treatment until it is finished.
Navalny, a 44-year-old politician and corruption investigator and one of Russia’s most prominent critics of President Vladimir Putin, was admitted to the intensive care unit of a hospital in Omsk, a Siberian city, on Thursday. His supporters believe that the tea he drank was poisoned and that the Kremlin is behind both that and the delay in his transfer to a German center.
ADVERTISEMENT
The trip was authorized only after many disputes that his supporters called a plot by the authorities to delay it until the poison could not be traced in his body. The transfer took place in a plane with advanced medical equipment and the politician was accompanied by German doctors.
At first, Navalny’s doctors in Omsk said he was not stable enough to travel, but the medical team that traveled to Siberia determined that he was.
The Kremlin denied that the resistance to the move was politically motivated, and its spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said it was a purely medical decision. The change of opinion came as international pressure on the Russian leadership mounted.
It would not be the first time that a prominent Moscow critic has suffered such an attack, nor the first that the Kremlin has been accused of orchestrating it.
On Thursday, French and German leaders said they were willing to offer Navalny and his family all necessary help and insisted on an investigation into what happened.
Navalny, the most prominent of the Russian opponents, campaigned to face Putin in the 2018 presidential elections, but was banned from running. Since then, he has promoted candidates in regional elections in front of the candidates of the ruling United Russia.
The Navalny Anti-Corruption Foundation has exposed cases of corruption among government officials, including some at the highest level. Last month, a businessman with ties to the Kremlin had to close the foundation after an economically devastating lawsuit.
– .
