MOSCOW — German doctors who examined a Russian opposition leader suspected of having been poisoned said Friday that he is fit to be flown abroad for medical treatment, according to a charity representative. But physicians at the hospital in Siberia where Alexei Navalny lies in a coma have refused to authorize the transfer.
Navalny, a 44-year-old politician and corruption investigator who is one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest critics, was admitted to an intensive care unit in the Siberian city of Omsk on Thursday. His supporters believe he was poisoned and that the Kremlin is behind it.
A plane with German specialists and equipment necessary to transfer Navalny landed at Omsk airport on Friday morning, but doctors at the Siberian hospital said his condition was too unstable to transport him.
Navalny’s supporters denounced that as a ploy by authorities to stall until any poison would no longer be traceable in his system. A senior doctor in Omsk said no poison had been found so far.
The German doctors later examined Navalny and determined that he was fit to fly to Germany for treatment, according to a representative of the NGO that has organized the plane to bring him to Berlin.
“I understand he’s still unconscious, but they’re used to such special assignments and they say very clearly he can fly and they want to fly him,” film producer Jaka Bizilj, of Cinema For Peace, told The Associated Press after being in touch with the German medical team.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he wasn’t aware of any instructions to stop the transfer and that it was purely a medical decision.
“It may pose a threat to his health,” Peskov said.
Navalny’s wife told reporters that hospital staff and men she suspected were law enforcement agents didn’t let her speak to the German specialists, who she said were brought into the facility in secrecy, through a back door.
“I was forcibly kicked out in a rude manner,” Yulia Navalnaya said, her voice shaking. “This is an appalling situation. They are not letting us take Alexei. We believe that clearly something is being hidden from us.”
She submitted a written request for a transfer on Friday to Putin. Later on Friday, the European Court of Human Rights said it was considering a request from Navalny’s allies to urge the Russian government to let the politician be transferred. The move seemed largely aimed at exerting pressure on Russia.
The most prominent member of Russia’s opposition, Navalny campaigned to challenge Putin in the 2018 presidential election but was barred from running. Since then, he has been promoting opposition candidates in regional elections, challenging members of the ruling party, United Russia.
His Foundation for Fighting Corruption has been exposing graft among government officials, including some at the highest level. Last month, he had to shut the foundation after a financially devastating lawsuit from a businessman with close ties to the Kremlin.
Navalny fell ill on a flight back to Moscow from Siberia on Thursday and was taken to the hospital after the plane made an emergency landing. His team made arrangements to transfer him to Charité, a clinic in Berlin that has a history of treating famous foreign leaders and dissidents and insisted that the transfer is paramount to saving the politician’s life.
“The ban on transferring Navalny is needed to stall and wait until the poison in his body can no longer be traced. Yet every hour of stalling creates a threat to his life,” Navalny’s spokesperson, Kira Yarmysh, tweeted.
Dr. Yaroslav Ashikhmin, Navalny’s physician in Moscow, told The Associated Press on Friday that there are very few conditions that would prevent patients from being transported these days.
Being on a plane with specialized equipment, including a ventilator and a machine that can do the work of the heart and lungs, “can be even safer than staying in a hospital in Omsk,” Ashikhmin said.
Yarmysh posted pictures of what she said was a bathroom inside the hospital that showed squalid conditions, including walls with paint peeling off, rusting pipes, and a dirty floor and walls.
While his supporters and family members continue to insist that Navalny was poisoned, Omsk hospital deputy chief doctor, Anatoly Kalinichenko, said that doctors don’t “believe the patient suffered from poisoning.”
Omsk news outlet NGS55 published a video statement of the hospital’s chief doctor, Alexander Murakhovsky, saying that a metabolic disorder was the most likely diagnosis and that a drop in blood sugar may have caused Navalny to lose consciousness.
Navalny will remain in Omsk until his condition stabilizes, Murakhovsky said on Friday evening after a meeting with German doctors.
But another doctor with ties to Navalny, Dr. Anastasia Vasilyeva, who flew to Omsk with the politician’s wife on Thursday, said that diagnosing Navalny with a “metabolic disorder” says nothing about what may have caused it — and it could have been the result of a poisoning.
Ashikhmin, who’s been Navalny’s doctor since 2013, said the politician has always been in good health, regularly went for medical checkups and didn’t have any underlying illnesses that could have triggered his condition.
Western toxicology experts expressed doubts that a poisoning could have been ruled out so quickly.
“It takes a while to rule things out. And particularly if something is highly toxic — it will be there in very low concentrations, and many screening tests would just not pick that substance up,” said Alastair Hay, an emeritus professor and toxicology expert from the school of medicine at the University of Leeds.
European Union spokeswoman Nabila Massrali said Friday the the 27-nation bloc expects “a swift, independent, transparent investigation” into what happened to Navalny. She added that the EU was urging Russian authorities to allow him to be transferred abroad.
Like many other opposition politicians in Russia, Navalny has been frequently detained by law enforcement and harassed by pro-Kremlin groups. In 2017, he was attacked by several men who threw antiseptic in his face, damaging an eye.
Last year, Navalny was rushed to a hospital from prison, where he was serving a sentence following an administrative arrest, with what his team said was suspected poisoning. Doctors said he had a severe allergic attack and discharged him back to prison the following day.
The widow of Alexander Litvinenko, former Russian agent who was killed in London by radioactive poisoning in 2006, says she understands the wishes of Navalny’s family to have him transported to Germany to receive care.
Marina Litvinenko told the AP via a video call from Italy that “every day, every hour, sometimes every second” is important.
She wanted to send a personal message to Navalny’s family to know that they have a lot of support in and out of Russia.
“And particularly for his wife Yulia, be strong,” she said. “And never give up. Believe he will survive.”
