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A rally expresses support for Mr Navalny who is unconscious
A German peacekeeping force hopes to send an air ambulance to bring Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny to Berlin for treatment following his suspected poisoning.
Medical equipment and specialists are also ready to board the plane, said the head of German NGO Cinema for Peace.
Russia has said it would allow the move. Mr Navalny’s wife had earlier said doctors refused to dismiss him.
Mr Navalny is in a coma after falling ill during a flight on Thursday.
His team suspects that something in the 44-year-old’s tea was placed in an airport cafe.
The Charity Hospital in Berlin is ready to treat the dumb critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, said Jaka Bizilj, director of the Cinema For Peace Foundation.
“We are in contact with the authorities and hope that all permits for the transport and a medical report will be given to the companion,” he added Thursday night.
- Russia’s worthy Putin critic
Both Germany and France have said they are happy to help with treatment. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said “he can get all the help and medical support we need from us”.
A spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin said the Kremlin would help move Mr Navalny abroad if needed and wished him a “speedy recovery”.
This is not the first time that the Cinema for Peace Foundation has helped a Russian activist: in 2018, it arranged for treatment of Russian activist Pyotr Verzilov in Berlin after his poisoning.
What happened to Alexei Navalny?
Mr Navalny, who in June described a vote on reforms that would allow Mr Putin to serve two more terms in office, after the four terms he already has as “coup d’etat” and a “violation of the constitution” “fell ill on a flight from Tomsk to Moscow and his plane made an emergency landing in Omsk, Siberia.
“Alexei has toxic poisoning,” tweeted Kira Yarmysh, the press secretary for the Anti-Corruption Foundation, which founded Mr. Navalny in 2011.
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A man in Moscow looks at social media footage of Mr Navalny being stretched to an ambulance
Video footage on social media shows Mr Navalny being taken on a stretcher to an ambulance at the airport.
Other disturbing video shows a stabbed Mr Navalny in pain on the flight. Passenger Pavel Lebedev said he heard the activist “writing in pain”.
Another photo on social media is meant to show Mr Navalny drinking from a bag in a Tomsk airport cafe.
He was taken to the hospital where Mrs. Yarmysh said he was on a ventilator and in a coma. Police officers filled the hospital and his belongings were confiscated, she added.
Mr Navalny’s wife, Yulia Navalnaya, was initially denied access to her husband because authorities said the patient had not agreed to the visit, Ms Yarmysh said, although she was later admitted to the ward.
His doctor Anastasia Vasilyeva said earlier that hospital doctors refused to provide records of his condition.
What is the latest on his condition?
Mr Nalvany’s family wants to move him to another clinic for safety reasons, Ms Yarmysh said, adding that doctors refused to release him for emergency treatment in Europe.
News agency Interfax reported that doctors had made a preliminary diagnosis of poisoning with an unidentified psychodyslepti, although the BBC has not been able to independently verify this.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the results of tests on Mr Navalny were necessary before considering a request for him to be transferred to board.
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Mr Navalny’s wife, Yulia Navalnaya, is in hospital but was initially denied access to her husband
Ms Yarmysh told the Echo of Moscow radio station that she was “sure it was intentional poisoning”.
State news agency TASS quoted a police officer as saying, “we can not rule out that he even drank or took something yesterday.”
Mrs Yasmysh dismissed this as “complete unrest” and said he had swum in a river the night before and was sober.
Who’s Alexei Navalny?
He made a name for himself by exposing official corruption, by branding Mr Putin’s United Putin as “the party of villains and thieves”, and has served several prison terms.
In 2011, he was arrested for 15 days and imprisoned after protests over voting rights by the United Russia party in the parliamentary elections.
Mr. Navalny was briefly jailed in July 2013 on charges of sustainability, but condemned the sentence as political.
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He tried to stand in the 2018 presidential race, but was expelled due to previous convictions of fraud in a case he again said was politically motivated.
Mr. Navalny also received a 30-day prison sentence in July 2019 after asking for unauthorized protests.
He was taken ill during that imprisonment. Doctors diagnosed him with “contact dermatitis”, but he said he had never had acute allergic reactions and his own doctor suggested he might have been exposed to “some toxic agent”. Mr Navalny also said he thought he may have been poisoned.
Mr. Navalny also suffered a serious chemical fire to his right eye in 2017 when he was attacked with green, antiseptic dye.
Last year, its Anti-Corruption Foundation was officially declared a ‘foreign agent’, allowing the authorities to subject it to more controls.
