Alexei Navalny: the two dramatic hours in which the poisoned Russian was saved in flight | World

He fell ill on a flight from Siberia to Moscow and the plane had to make an emergency landing in the city of Omsk. Two days later, Russian officials were convinced to allow his transfer to Germany.

BBC News Russian (the Russian service of the BBC) gathered information to understand how flight attendants and doctors fought to save Navalny’s life in the Siberian skies. This is the reconstruction of the two hours of this dangerous journey.

What happened that morning

On August 20, Alexei Navalny was taking the S7 airline flight from Tomsk to Moscow. He hadn’t eaten or drunk anything that morning, having a cup of tea that he had had at Tomsk Bogashevo airport, according to his press officer, Kira Yarmysh.

Another passenger on the plane, Ilya Ageev, also saw Navalny drinking tea an hour before takeoff. The critic of the Russian government smiled and joked with the passengers who recognized him.

8:01 am Tomsk time

During the first half hour of the flight, Navalny began to feel bad. The flight attendants were distributing water to the passengers, but he refused. Then he got up to go to the bathroom.

8:30 am Tomsk time

Another passenger immediately tried to use the bathroom, but Alexei Navalny occupied the bathroom for about 20 minutes. A line began to form.

8:50 am Tomsk time

At this point, four flight attendants knew that one of their passengers was ill.

9:00 am Tomsk time

Minutes later, a flight attendant made an announcement asking if there were doctors on board. It was then that the other passengers realized that something serious was happening.

The rest of the crew informed the pilot of the incident and tried to administer first aid at Navalny.

His assistant, Ilya Pakhomov, paced the rows of seats asking if there was anyone who could provide him with medical care. A woman, who was not identified, introduced herself as a nurse.

For the next hour, she and the flight attendants focused on keeping Navalny conscious until the pilot could make an emergency landing, according to S7 airline.

Sergey Nezhenets, a lawyer, was sitting near where Navalny received treatment. He would make a connection in Moscow to go to Krasnodar, in southern Russia.

“I started by paying attention to what happened when a flight attendant asked medical professionals to introduce themselves,” Nezhenets told the BBC.

“A few minutes later, the pilot announced that he would be landing in Omsk because a passenger was feeling unwell. I only realized that the passenger in question was Navalny when we landed, when I checked my Twitter and saw his spokesman’s posts.”

“A few minutes after the announcement to call for a doctor, Alexei began to moan and scream. He was clearly in pain. He was lying on the floor in the part of the plane reserved for the crew. He didn’t say a word, he just screamed.”

That’s when the nurse came to help, says the passenger.

“I don’t know what they were doing, I didn’t see it,” he says. “But I heard them say, ‘Alexei, drink, drink, Alexei, breathe!'”

“When he groaned, we all felt better, because we could see that at least he was alive. I want to point out that, at the time, I didn’t know it was Navalny.”

Two of Navalny’s assistants were beside him; one was the press officer, Kira Yarmysh.

“I was very nervous,” says Nezhenets. “The doctor asked what happened to him and Kira said, ‘I don’t know, he was probably poisoned.’

8:20 am Omsk time (one hour difference from Tomsk)

The crew rushed to request permission for an emergency landing in Omsk, according to the airline. The request was fulfilled immediately.

The plane took just over 30 minutes to land after passengers were notified that there would be an emergency landing.

But the crew “kept checking the windows and complaining that due to cloudy weather it was taking longer to land, while Alexei was very ill.”

The lawyer says he heard vomiting sounds when he tried to give Alexei a drink.

It was unclear whether the crew actually carried out a stomach cleanse. If the crew suspected food poisoning, they may have performed the procedure, according to emergency personnel Mikhail Fremderman. But, he says, that would not help in the case of poisoning by a compound like the one reported by the German authorities.

And if Navalny’s food had been poisoned, his vomit would endanger the people who were providing medical care, as well as the janitors who later cleaned the plane.

The airport medical staff entered the aircraft just two minutes after landing.

They examined Navalny and said that “it was not a case for us, he needs intensive care,” recalls Nezhenets.

He heard one of the doctors call an ambulance on the phone. He asked the car to stop at the landing area, saying the patient was in serious condition.

Then he heard the doctor give instructions on the color of the plane and where to stop the ambulance.

“We waited another 10 minutes for the ambulance to arrive,” he says. “During that time, the doctors took Navalny’s blood pressure and put him on an IV, and I think it was clear to them that it would be useless.”

Vasily Sidorus, the chief physician at the Omsk airport, said that he did not treat Alexei Navalny personally, but that his colleagues did everything possible to save his life.

“It was difficult to understand what was going on since I couldn’t speak,” he says. “They did everything they had to do, saved his life, and made sure he was taken to a proper hospital.”

The passengers we spoke to believe that the doctors examined Navalny for about 15 to 20 minutes while he was still on the plane.

Navalny was taken off the plane and placed, with a stretcher, in the ambulance, which took him to Omsk hospital.

The plane was refueled and, after half an hour, headed for Moscow, according to Nezhenets.

“When we landed at Moscow Domodedovo airport, several policemen and other people got on the plane.”

“They asked the passengers who were in the rows next to Alexei to stay where they were, while the rest could leave. Alexei was sitting somewhere in the middle of the plane, between rows 10 and 11.”

For the lawyer, it was strange to see policemen on board. “At some point, it did not appear to be a criminal problem. However, there were security services.”

For two days, the Omsk hospital kept Navalny in the facility for acute poisoning. Initially, doctors did not allow him to travel to Germany, claiming that it would be dangerous due to his unstable health.

However, on August 22, he was transferred to the Charité clinic in Berlin. Two days later, German doctors announced that tests confirmed that he had been poisoned.

Omsk doctors, including the hospital director and the toxicologist director, insist that there were no poisonous substances in Navalny’s body when he was under the care of the Russian hospital. They said an alternative diagnosis would be a metabolic disorder.

BBC News Russian asked the Omsk authorities to provide a detailed account of Navalny’s hospitalization, but received no response.