Russia: Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny in a coma - was he poisoned?

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Alexei Navalny

Alexei Navalny's screams could be heard all over the plane. A passenger recorded the scene in a video after the S7 plane landed in Omsk in an unscheduled manner. Shortly after the start, the Russian opposition politician suddenly felt bad - so bad that he lost consciousness a little later and was put into a coma in the hospital.

"I am sure that Alexej was poisoned," says his spokeswoman Kira Jarmysch the independent broadcaster TV Rain. She had accompanied the 44-year-old. The two wanted to fly back to Moscow from the Siberian city of Tomsk.

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A video of Navalny's ambulance transport in Omsk is shown on social media

Now he is in the No. 1 emergency hospital in the Siberian city of Omsk, the doctors call his condition "serious". Navalny is ventilated. They are looking for the cause of his illness, have done dozens of tests, said the clinic's vice chief physician. He named poisoning as one of the possible reasons for the opposition's poor condition. The doctor emphasized that everything is being done to save Navalny's life. So far, no test results should be available, they should only be published in a few hours.

Navalny is one of the Kremlin's harshest critics. Again and again he takes on the powerful in Russia, including President Vladimir Putin himself, and thus exposes himself to a great risk. But Navalny manages - despite the repression - to get thousands on the streets for protests, as last summer when thousands of Muscovites demanded the admission of independent candidates to the city parliament for weeks.

The lawyer also regularly publishes information about the assets of politicians, officials and business people in the country, thus exposing corruption in Russia. He even denounced the influential head of the National Guard, Viktor Solotov, who then cursed and threatened him. Nawalny's foundation for the fight against corruption has already been declared a "foreign agent" - a label that the state gives unwanted organizations to make their work more difficult through bureaucracy and controls.

Millions of followers on social media

Navalny's videos are popular because they showcase the country's elite, because he doesn't mince his words. The contributions are clicked hundreds of thousands of times, sometimes even millions, as in the case of the then Prime Minister Dimitrij Medvedev, to whom Navalny attributed several residences and even a winery in Italy. Navalny has millions of followers on social media, especially younger Russians, and many reacted on Thursday to the news of Navalny's poor condition.

According to media reports, the lawyer also researched the local governor Sergej Schwachkin and his possessions in Tomsk. As in other regions of the country, elections are due at the beginning of September. Above all, Navalny is trying to expose candidates from the Kremlin United Russia party - like Schwachkin. He regularly calls on the opposition to choose only the most promising opponent in order to weaken the Kremlin's chances. He calls it "smart voting" after several United Russia representatives lost their seats in Moscow.

Navalny is regularly arrested, and in the summer of last year he was again detained for 30 days after calling for protests. He had to be taken to the hospital because his face was suddenly swollen and red. Even then he suspected that he should be poisoned. The doctors, however, only spoke of an allergic reaction. Navalny filed a complaint with the prosecutor's office.

Victim of mysterious poisoning

Navalny would not be the first victim of enigmatic poisoning since Putin ruled:

• In 2003 , the journalist Yury Shchekochikhin showed similar symptoms of intoxication, he died in a clinic in Moscow.

• In 2004 , two years before Anna Politkovskaya was shot, several organs of the journalist failed. Earlier, she had apparently been poured poisoned tea on a plane.

• In 2006 , the former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko was killed by polonium poisoning in London.

• In 2017 the organs of the Russian opposition leader Vladimir Kara-Mursa failed for the second time. The Putin critic's wife spoke of poisoning, he was flown abroad and recovered.

• In 2018 , the former Russian double agent Sergej Skripal and his daughter suffered severe symptoms of poisoning from the neurotoxin "Novitschok", but survived, according to Scotland Yard. Since then, the British Police Department has kept the Skripals hidden.

• In 2018 , Pyotr Verilov, a member of the Russian political punk band Pussy Riot, suddenly could no longer speak or move, and he lost consciousness. He was flown to Berlin. Doctors from the Berlin Charité who treated him believed that poisoning was likely.

On Thursday, the Telegram messenger service channels close to the Kremlin reported that Navalny had taken pills after drinking alcohol. This rejected his spokeswoman. Yarmysch announced that Navalny had only had black tea the morning before the flight. A photo of a passenger shows the opposition activists in T-shirts in a cafe at the airport with a red mug in hand. Navalny did not drink or eat anything on board the plane, the spokeswoman said.

She criticized the fact that the treating doctors did not communicate with Navalny's doctors in Moscow, but instead with investigative authorities. Pictures published by Jarmysch showed several police officers in the hospital. She herself was interviewed three times, she wrote on Twitter. There are more officials than doctors on site, she commented on the situation. Yaroslav Aschichin, one of Navalny's doctors in Moscow, already demanded in an interview with the "Novaya Gazeta" that the opposition member should be brought to a special clinic in the capital or abroad, for example to Germany or France. But that is currently difficult because of the corona pandemic.

Kremlin spokesman Dimitrij Peskow has meanwhile wished Navalny a speedy recovery, "like every other sick citizen in the country," as he emphasized. Peskov promised that help would be given if there was a request to fly Navalny abroad for treatment.

Collaboration: Alexander Chernyshev