Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny in intensive care, likely poisoned
Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny is unconscious in an intensive care unit in a hospital in Omsk. He was likely poisoned.
Navalny was returning by plane to Moscow from the city of Tomsk when he suddenly felt sick, said the politician’s press secretary Kira Yarmysh.
The plane made an emergency landing in Omsk, where Navalny was urgently sent to a clinic.
“We suspect that Alexei was poisoned by something mixed into [his] tea. It was the only thing that he drank in the morning,” wrote Kira Yarmysh on Twitter.
• How Russia’s main opposition figure created a media empire on social media
• Potential Russian presidential candidate Navalny’s thoughts on the Caucasus
• What is to be expected from RF President Navalny?
A video shot on the plane is circulating online, in which Navalny can be heard screaming in pain before losing consciousness.
A resident of Tomsk, who flew with Navalny, posted a photo of the opposition leader drinking tea at the airport. And then he published a video from the plane – screams are heard on the recording in the background.
Eyewitnesses report that Navalny went to the toilet and then called for help:
Another social media video shows the politician being carried on a stretcher to an ambulance on the airport runway.
Navalny is in serious condition, he is on an artificial respiration apparatus, the head of the hospital’s medical service Anatoly Kalinichenko told reporters, but “there is no certainty that the cause of the condition is poisoning.”
Police and officers of the Russian Investigative Committee are at the hospital where Alexei Navalny is located.
Who is Navalny?
Alexei Navalny, 44, a politician and anti-corruption activist, is a longtime ardent critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
He is the founder of the Anti-Corruption Foundation, which investigates corruption in the Russian government.
Last year, his Anti-Corruption Fund was officially declared a “foreign agent,” allowing the authorities to subject him to additional scrutiny.
Navalny was arrested several times for participating in unauthorized demonstrations.
In 2013, he received a suspended sentence in the Kirovles case on embezzlement of state property. Navalny himself called the verdict political.
Due to his ‘criminal’ record, he was denied participation in the 2018 presidential elections.
In July 2019, when Navalny was serving his arrest, he was taken to a Moscow clinical hospital after experiencing an acute allergic reaction. The doctors then could not identify the stimulus.
The poisoned opponents of Putin. A chronicle
The list of critics of Vladimir Putin who have become victims of sudden poisoning with symptoms similar to that of Alexei Navalny is quite long:
– Former Prime Minister of Russia Yegor Gaidar
– Journalist Yuri Shchekochikhin (deceased)
– Journalist Anna Poltikovskaya (later shot)
– Opposition politician Vladimir Kara-Murza Jr. (poisoned twice)
– Former intelligence officer Alexander Litvinenko, who lived in the UK (died)
– Former intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, who lived in Great Britain (rescued by doctors, but one person who picked up the bottle of the poisonous substance died).
