Aides to Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny yesterday accused doctors of risking his life by refusing to allow him to be moved from a Siberian hospital after his suspected poisoning.
Navalny, a 44-year-old lawyer and anti-corruption campaigner who is among Russian President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest critics, was in a coma in intensive care in Omsk after he lost consciousness while on a flight and his plane made an emergency landing on Thursday.
Aides say they believe he was poisoned and that something was put in his tea at an airport cafe.
Photo: AFP
An air ambulance was on its way to fly him to Germany for treatment but Navalny’s spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh said doctors were refusing to allow him to be moved.
“The chief doctor stated that Navalny is not transportable” because his condition was “unstable,” Yarmysh said on Twitter, calling the decision “a direct threat to his life.”
“The ban on the transportation of Navalny is an attempt on his life, which is being made right now by doctors and the deceitful authorities who sanctioned it,” Yarmysh said.
Doctors have said his condition was serious but stable and have yet to make any official diagnosis.
Navalny’s team said earlier that the hospital in Omsk was ill-equipped and his doctor, Anastasia Vasilyeva, said she had asked for the Kremlin’s help to transfer him to a European clinic.
Yarmysh said an air ambulance dispatched to fly him to Germany for treatment was due to land shortly.
It left Nuremberg early yesterday after German Chancellor Angela Merkel extended an offer of treatment.
Foreign leaders including Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron have voiced concern for Navalny, who has faced repeated physical attacks and prosecutions in more than a decade of opposition to Russian authorities.
He lost consciousness shortly after his plane took off on Thursday from Tomsk in Siberia, where he was working to support opposition candidates ahead of regional elections next month.
Yarmysh said he had seemed “absolutely fine” before boarding the flight and had only consumed a cup of tea at the airport.
She said she was sure he had suffered from an “intentional poisoning” and put the blame on Putin.
“Whether or not he gave the order personally, the blame lies with him,” she said.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said claims of poisoning were “only assumptions” until tests proved otherwise.
He wished Navalny a “speedy recovery” after pledging Kremlin help to secure him treatment abroad if needed.
EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell said that “those responsible must be held to account” if the suspected poisoning was confirmed.
BLOODSHED: North Koreans take extreme measures to avoid being taken prisoner and sometimes execute their own forces, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Saturday said that Russian and North Korean forces sustained heavy losses in fighting in Russia’s southern Kursk region. Ukrainian and Western assessments say that about 11,000 North Korean troops are deployed in the Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces occupy swathes of territory after staging a mass cross-border incursion in August last year. In his nightly video address, Zelenskiy quoted a report from Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi as saying that the battles had taken place near the village of Makhnovka, not far from the Ukrainian border. “In battles yesterday and today near just one village, Makhnovka,
Russia and Ukraine have exchanged prisoners of war in the latest such swap that saw the release of hundreds of captives and was brokered with the help of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), officials said on Monday. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that 189 Ukrainian prisoners, including military personnel, border guards and national guards — along with two civilians — were freed. He thanked the UAE for helping negotiate the exchange. The Russian Ministry of Defense said that 150 Russian troops were freed from captivity as part of the exchange in which each side released 150 people. The reason for the discrepancy in numbers
The foreign ministers of Germany, France and Poland on Tuesday expressed concern about “the political crisis” in Georgia, two days after Mikheil Kavelashvili was formally inaugurated as president of the South Caucasus nation, cementing the ruling party’s grip in what the opposition calls a blow to the country’s EU aspirations and a victory for former imperial ruler Russia. “We strongly condemn last week’s violence against peaceful protesters, media and opposition leaders, and recall Georgian authorities’ responsibility to respect human rights and protect fundamental freedoms, including the freedom to assembly and media freedom,” the three ministers wrote in a joint statement. In reaction
BARRIER BLAME: An aviation expert questioned the location of a solid wall past the end of the runway, saying that it was ‘very bad luck for this particular airplane’ A team of US investigators, including representatives from Boeing, on Tuesday examined the site of a plane crash that killed 179 people in South Korea, while authorities were conducting safety inspections on all Boeing 737-800 aircraft operated by the country’s airlines. All but two of the 181 people aboard the Boeing 737-800 operated by South Korean budget airline Jeju Air died in Sunday’s crash. Video showed the aircraft, without its landing gear deployed, crash-landed on its belly and overshoot a runaway at Muan International Airport before it slammed into a barrier and burst into flames. The plane was seen having engine trouble.
RSS