Alexey Navalny, the leader of the opposition movement, the head of the Anti-Corruption Foundation, and the main critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime was hospitalized on Thursday (August 20). Western countries and Russian oppositional media suspect that he was poisoned and that the government is somehow involved in that.
Navalny felt sick last Thursday on the board of the plane going from Tomsk to Moscow. The aircraft passengers witnessed Navalny yelling in pain and losing consciousness. After that, the plane made an emergency landing at the Omsk airport, where Navalny was hospitalized. Kira Yarmysh, his press secretary, stated that he didn’t have anything for breakfast except for the tea in the Tomsk airport cafe.
Omsk doctors didn’t find any traces of poison in Navalny’s blood and urine tests, Alexander Murakhovsky, the chief physician of the Omsk hospital, stated. Murakhovsky suggested that this situation might have happened because of the drop of sugar in the blood. Yulia Navalnaya, Navalny’s wife, didn’t agree with the diagnosis and asked to transport her husband to the German clinic Charité, Berlin. After several conflicts with his wife and publicity, the Omsk hospital agreed to allow Navalny’s transfer to Germany.
Charité doctors already confirmed the intoxication with a substance from the group of cholinesterase inhibitors. The hospital added that the results have been proven by various independent laboratories.
German doctors suspect that he could have been poisoned in the same way as the Russian spy Sergei Skripal in 2018 in Salisbury, England. The British investigators suspect the Russian GRU used the nervous paralytic substance called “Novichok” to poison Skripal. He survived, but still suffers from serious health problems.
While the Ministry of Internal Affairs announced the new investigation, the General Prosecutor’s Office stated several hours ago that there’s no evidence to initiate a criminal case for poisoning. Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin Press Secretary, stated on Wednesday that there are no reasons to start any kind of the investigation.
