Aleksei A. Navalny, Russia’s most prominent opposition leader, was on intensive care and unconscious in a Siberian hospital on Thursday after suffering symptoms of what his spokeswoman called poisoning.
A plane carrying Mr Navalny, 44, a high-profile critic of President Vladimir V. Putin, made an emergency landing in Omsk, en route to Moscow, after he began to feel unwell, spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh said. said on Twitter.
“We assume Alexei was poisoned with something mixed with his tea,” Ms. Yarmysh wrote. ‘That’s the only thing he drank this morning. ‘She later added that the police were called to the hospital at’ our request ‘.
A photo shared on social media showed him drinking from a bag in the cafeteria of the airport in Tomsk, where the flight took place.
Last year, he was hospitalized with a ‘severe allergic reaction’ in prison, which his doctor suggested at the time could be the result of a poisoning, after he was arrested for leading an unauthorized election protest.
He was arrested and sentenced to 30 days in prison for calling a rally to protest a decision by election officials to escape several opposition candidates to run for Moscow City Council.
Mr. Navalny, a lawyer, anti-corruption activist and vocal critic of Mr Putin, was killed in 2017 in the Siberian city of Barnaul by an unknown assailant who had allegedly shaken his hand.
He said a doctor had told him he had lost 80 percent of his sight in one eye after a chemical burn of the green liquid.
While there was no independent confirmation that Mr Navalny was poisoned before he fell ill on Thursday, Russian security services are suspected of targeting a number of dissidents and others, including Sergei V. Skripal, a former Russian double agent who poisoned was in England in 2018.
Andrew Higgins contributed reporting.
