Moscow – Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was in a coma Thursday in a Siberian hospital after drinking tea laced with poison, according to his representatives. Russian doctors provided conflicting information about his condition, claiming he was stable, but his life was still in danger.
Earlier in the day, his spokeswoman said the politician was comatose and was on a ventilator after falling ill during a flight.
The 44-year-old is a fierce critic of President Vladimir Putin, and he has been the target of years of harassment, including several arrests and a previously suspected poisoning. Spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh said on Twitter that he was beginning to feel uncomfortable on a flight back to Moscow from Siberia, suffering from “toxic poisoning.”
Video posted on social media appeared to show that paramedics arrived inside the plane because one could be heard loudly from camera. Other unconfirmed videos from social media showed him showing off, without moving, driving in the ambulance at the airport.
The plane made an emergency landing in the Siberian city of Omsk and she said he was admitted to a hospital “in a coma in critical condition.”
While state media quoted some doctors at the hospital as saying his condition had improved and he was stable, Yarmysh’s said in tweets that his “condition has not changed yet,” and that he was consciously left without an official diagnosis.
She dismissed suggestions from unidentified Russian government officials that Navalny had just suffered food poisoning as “complete nonsense.”
Yarmysh told the independent radio station Echo Moskvy earlier that Navalny started whipping on the plane and asked her to talk to him so he could ‘focus on a sound of a voice.’ She said he then went to the bathroom and lost consciousness.
Yarmysh said there must have been something in tea that Navalny drank at the airport Thursday morning, which she said was the only thing he had consumed before the flight.
“Doctors said the toxin was rapidly absorbed with hot fluid,” she tweeted, adding that Navalny’s team is calling police to the hospital.
Navalny was taken to hospital last year from a jail, where he was serving a sentence following an administrative arrest, with what his team said suspected poisoning. Doctors claimed he had suffered a severe allergic attack, and was released to prison the next day.
Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation has exposed graffiti among government officials, including some at the highest level. Last month, the politician had to close the foundation following a financially devastating lawsuit filed by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a businessman with close ties to the Kremlin.
The most prominent member of Russia’s opposition, Navalny campaigned to challenge Putin in the 2018 presidential election, but was prevented from running. He set up a network of campaign offices in Russia and has since nominated opposition candidates in the regional elections, challenging members of the ruling party of the United Russia.
In an interview with Echo Moscow, Yarmysh said she believed the suspected poisoning was linked to this year’s regional election program. Vyacheslav Gimadi, a lawyer with the Navalny Foundation, said his team had applied to the Russian Commission of Inquiry to open a criminal justice system.
“There is no doubt that Navalny was poisoned because of his political stance and activity,” Gimadi tweeted on Thursday.
Like many other opposition politicians in Russia, Navalny is often detained by law enforcement and harassed by pro-Kremlin groups. In 2017, he was attacked by several men who threw antiseptics in his face, with one eye damaged.
Belarusian authoritarian president Alexander Lukashenko accused Navalny of organizing last week unusual mass protests against his re-election who have ousted Russia’s ex-Soviet neighbor since August 9. He gave no evidence, and that allegation was one of many guilty foreign troops for the unrest.
As CBS News correspondent Roxana Saberi reports, Russian agents have been accused of poisoning a number of Kremlin enemies, including a former Russian double agent who was targeted in England two years ago with a deadly nerve agent.
There was no immediate response from the Kremlin to the allegations that Navalny was poisoned on Thursday.
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