For Alexei Navalny it was another routine trip to the regions. Specifically to Siberia’s largest city, Novosibirsk, and to its allied neighbor, Tomsk. “A wonderful city. One of the most beautiful in our country, ‘enthusiastically Navalny on Instagram, and posted a photo from Tomsk with a group of young fans on Wednesday.
Navalny is Russia’s most prominent opposition activist. He made no secret of why he had fled to Tomsk, known for its wooden inns and the illuminated university. The goal, he wrote, was to support independent candidates ahead of next month’s local elections. And, of course, to kick the “villains” out of the ruling Russian party of Vladimir Putin.
On Thursday morning, he made his way to Tomsk’s Bogashevo airport for a flight back to Moscow. Navalny was traveling with his press secretary, Kira Yarmysh, and a few assistants. At the airport he ordered a cup of black tea at the coffee house in Vienna. He sat down. Navalny may have been excluded from state television, but he is still a famous figure in Russia. Another passenger, local DJ Pavel Lebedev, snapped a photo of Navalny – paper bag in hand, about to drink his drink.
The group rode on the S7 flight to Moscow. The plane took off. According to Lebedev, Navalny soon became unwell. The change in his condition was sudden, violent. He went to the loo at the back of the plane. He did not reappear and appears to have fallen. Video footage shows crew sniffing at him. There are grim cries of pain.
‘He started to get really sick. “They had trouble getting him around and he was screaming,” Lebedev said. Realizing that Navalny’s condition was serious, the pilot made an emergency landing at Omsk airport. Navalny was riding on a gurney. Video of the scene showed a designated figure, looked pale and sad. Medics loaded him into a yellow ambulance. She drove him away.
Yarmysh broke the news on Twitter: that her boss was unconscious and seriously ill, and that his tea was apparently poisoned. He had drunk nothing but food, she pointed out. Doctors told her that a toxin mixed in a hot drink would be absorbed quickly. An hour later there was an update. Navalny was in intensive care. He was attached to a ventilator and fought for his life.
For the next few hours, the scenes at Omsk Hospital number one were terribly horrible. According to Yarmysh, medical staff initially acknowledged that Navalny had probably been poisoned. Soon, however, police arrived, flooding the hallway outside the patient’s room. After this, the doctors were less attentive. They were apparently afraid to speak out.
Anatoly Kalinichenko, the deputy chief physician of the hospital, told reporters that poisoning was one scenario among many. Meanwhile, Russian state media ran alternative versions of what might have happened. It suggested that Navalny had drunk too much the previous night and was taking medication. This was not true, said Yarmysh – another fiction in the Kremlin’s long-running anti-Navalny campaign.
There were strange echoes of another poisoned tea scandal: the 2006 assassination of Alexander Litvinenko in London. Two Kremlin assassins killed Litvinenko with deadly polonium. Russian officials said Moscow could not be held responsible because the episode damaged the country’s international reputation. On Thursday, pro-Putin TV host Dmitry Kisylov applied the same twisted logic to Navalny’s state, responding that the West was to blame.
By noon, Navalny’s wife, Yulia – the mother of her two children – had reached Moscow from Moscow. She brought with her personal doctor Navalny, Anastasia Vasilyeva. However, the authorities refused to let her into the room. They demanded proof in the form of a marriage certificate that Yulia was in fact his wife – a cruel and petty bully. Eventually she was allowed into it.
Drifting above these unfortunate scenes were two questions. How much did Putin know about the events at Tomsk airport? And if this was a state plot, similar to the Litvinenko poisoning, why now? Unlike some Russian opposition figures who went into exile abroad, Navalny was based in Moscow. It would have been easy to poison him there months or even years ago.
During his trip to Siberia, Navalny had conducted an investigation, as well as met local candidates and volunteers, the local news site Tayga.Info reported. There was a certain amount of cloak and dagger at the visit. “I can not reveal all the details,” said Lybov Sobol, an ally, when asked if he was preparing an exhibition. ‘But Navalny was on a business trip. He did not relax in the regions. ‘
But, his friends add, it is unlikely a Siberian governor as mayor would have poisoned one of Navalny’s statues without permission from above. Poisoning, they add, is a favorite method of the Kremlin’s security services, in KGB times and today. In the last century, Russian spies have perfected ways to control invisible toxins – sometimes to warn, and sometimes to kill.
Recently, Navalny wrote that the kind of revolution that is taking place next door in Belarus would happen soon in Russia, causing Putin and his KGB happiness to be lost. The similarities are obvious. The President of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, has been in office for 26 years; in the summer, Putin “won” for two decades – a constitutional vote, allowing him to stand up again and potentially extend his administration until 2036.
Despite the fate of Navalny, we are unlikely to discover the truth. Russia’s investigative and judicial system is in no way independent. Previous deaths of high-profile critics such as journalist Anna Politkovskaya have never been fully investigated. Sometimes a few people are convicted at a low level. Mar de zakazchiks – those who give the orders – are rarely found as ever.
* Luke Harding’s latest book, Shadow State: Murder, Mayhem and Russia’s Remaking of the West (Guardian Faber), is available at the Guardian Bookshop.
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