Leading Putin foe Alexei Navalny ‘is poisoned’ and rushed to hospital
Putin trolls ‘poisoned’ critic Alexei Navalny as Kremlin wishes him a ‘speedy recovery’ while doctors fight to save him after ‘toxins were poured into his tea’, leaving him screaming in agony
- Alexei Navalny, Putin’s arch political rival and critic, has been rushed to hospital amid fears he was poisoned
- His press secretary believes chemicals were slipped into a cup of tea he drank before boarding a plane today
- 44-year-old fell ill shortly after take-off, forcing pilot to make emergency landing as medics rushed on board
- Navalny could be heard screaming in pain before being stretchered off the aircraft while unconscious
- Comes after Alexander Lukashenko, president of Belarus, accused Navalny of driving protests in his country
- Kremlin has wished Navalny a ‘speedy recovery’ and says doctors are doing everything they can to help him
By Will Stewart In Moscow and Chris Pleasance for MailOnline
Published: 02:25 EDT, 20 August 2020 | Updated: 09:55 EDT, 20 August 2020
The Kremlin has wished Putin’s arch-rival Alexei Navalny a ‘speedy recovery’ as doctors battle to save his life amid claims he was poisoned with a toxin that was poured into his tea.
The lawyer and anti-corruption campaigner was left screaming in agony after falling ill on a flight from Tomsk to Moscow on Thursday morning, forcing the plane to make an emergency landing in the Siberian city of Omsk.
Video shows the 44-year-old opposition leader being stretchered from the aircraft into a waiting ambulance before being rushed to intensive care. More footage taken on board the plane reveals he was screaming in pain before falling unconscious.
Navalny, one of President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest critics, is now in a ‘deep coma’ and hooked up to a ventilator, with doctors saying his condition is ‘grave’, press secretary Kira Yarmysh revealed.
Wife Yulia and Navalny’s personal physicians rushed to Omsk to see him, but have so-far been forbidden from doing so, Yarmysh claimed.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov this afternoon wished Navalny a ‘speedy recovery’ and insisted ‘the best doctors’ are doing everything they can to help him.
He said there is no evidence yet that the politician was poisoned, adding that ‘assumptions are only assumptions’. If it can be proved that he was given a toxin, then an investigation would be launched, Peskov added.
Alexei Navalny, arch political rival and critic of Valdimir Putin has apparently being poisoned at an airport
Kira Yarmysh, Navalny’s press secretary, says she suspects poison was added to a cup of tea that he was pictured drinking before falling ill on a flight and being rushed to hospital
Navalny was unconscious when he was taken from the plane, and had to be put on a ventilator. He is now in a coma, and doctors say his condition is ‘grave’
Yulia Navalny, Alexi’s wife and mother of his two children, is pictured arriving at Ormsk hospital alongside opposition politician Ivan Zhdanov
Asked whether Navalny’s illness is significant, given his criticism of the government, Peskov said the government ‘has many critics’ before adding: ‘Doctors and law enforcement take all citizens equally seriously.’
Quizzed over why police officers and FSB agents had arrived at the hospital where Navalny is being treated, Peskov refused to comment, and also refused to say whether Putin is aware of Navalny’s condition.
‘Media reports are available to absolutely everyone, and are also available to the head of state,’ he added.
Yarmysh said she suspects poison was added to tea that Nalvany was pictured drinking at the airport, in an image widely circulated on social media. She told a Moscow radio station that she was ‘sure it was intentional poisoning’.
Pavel Lebedev, a fellow passenger, said that Navalny went to the bathroom at the start of the flight ‘and didn’t come back.’
How Alexei Navalny has been punished for defying Putin
2011: Navalny is arrested and jailed for 15 days for ‘defying an official’ after leading protests in Moscow
2012: Jailed for 15 days after leading an anti-Putin protest in the wake of presidential elections. His apartment is subsequently raided, and some of his private emails posted online
2013: Put on trial for embezzlement, amid claims he tried to steal wood from a state-owned company. He is convicted and sentenced to five years, but allowed out on bail. The conviction is subsequently overturned
2014: Placed under house arrest, again charged with embezzlement alongside brother Oleg. Again, the conviction is overturned
2017: He is re-convicted in the first corruption case, and ordered to repay millions of rubles of compensation in the second
While leaving his office, a pro-Kremlin activist throws green disinfectant dye in his face, partially blinding him
2018: Arrested twice for leading protests against presidential elections he was barred from running in. Jailed for a total of 50 days in jail
2019: Arrested and jailed for a total of 40 days for leading protests during Moscow Duma elections. While in jail he was rushed to hospital, suffering from what medics called an allergic reaction. Others believe he was poisoned
2020: Navalny is rushed unconscious to hospital and placed on a ventilator after falling ill on a flight. His allies say he was poisoned
‘He started feeling really sick. They struggled to bring him round and he was screaming in pain,’ he added.
The manager of the Vienna Cafe at Tomsk airport, where the image was taken, said the staff member who served Navalny the drink now cannot be found.
The cafe has been closed and an investigation is now underway, the manager said.
Medics rushed on board the plane after it landed to help the stricken Navalny, who was taken unconscious to a nearby hospital that was quickly flooded with police and FSB agents.
Yarmysh said medics initially gave a diagnosis of ‘toxic poisoning’, but have since refusing to discuss Navalny’s condition or possible causes.
The BAZA media outlet reported that his initial diagnosis was a ‘coma of unknown genesis’ possibly caused by ‘acute poisoning’, though there has been no official confirmation of this.
She claimed that medics and police were seen speaking in private, and that police had requested to search Nalvany’s possessions along with his luggage.
Yaroslav Ashikhmin, a cardiologist who has overseen Navalny’s health since 2016, told Russian news site Meduza that he is trying to have the campaigner transferred to Germany for treatment.
He said the move will be the only way for Navalny’s supporters to uncover the truth about whether he was poisoned, and with what substance.
Deputy chief doctor Anatoly Kalinichenko, who works at Ormsk hospital, told the media: ‘Alexei is on a ventilator, his condition is grave but stable.
‘There are now several diagnoses that are being clarified. During today, the diagnosis will be determined.
‘There is no certainty the cause is poisoning, but this is one of the versions. I cannot tell you more details because of medical secrecy.’
Medics later said they were ‘working on saving his life’.
Earlier, as Navalny was being taken to hospital, Yarmysh posted from his ambulance: ‘We assume that Alexei was poisoned with something mixed into the tea. It was the only thing that he drank in the morning.
‘Doctors say the toxin was absorbed faster through the hot liquid. Alexey is now unconscious.’
She added: ‘This morning Navalny was returning to Moscow from Tomsk. On the flight he started feeling ill.
‘The plane made an emergency landing in Omsk.’
Navalny is seen as Putin’s most charismatic and potentially dangerous foe.
He has faced constant legal attacks and has served a number of jail sentences.
His anti-corruption organisation was dubbed a ‘foreign agent’ by the Russian authorities.
Police have conducted repeated raids on his offices, and this is not the first time that Navalny has suffered a physical attack.
In 2017 he was left partially blind in one eye after attackers threw green dye used as a disinfectant at his face outside his office.
In August last year he suffered rashes and his face became swollen while he was in a police detention centre serving a short term for calling for illegal protests.
He was taken to hospital where doctors said he had suffered an allergic reaction but Navalny asked for an investigation into poisoning.
Navalny’s press secretary uploaded this image of police in the corridors of the hospital where he is being treated, saying ‘there are more police here than doctors’
Police are seen talking outside the hospital in Omsk where Navalny is being treated after he lost consciousness on a flight, amid suspicions he has been poisoned
Journalists wait for news outside the hospital in Ormsk, Siberia, where Navalny is being treated
Navalny (file image) was on a flight from Tomsk to Moscow when he suddenly fell ill, forcing the plane to make an emergency landing in Omsk shortly after take-off
‘He was poisoned in the police detention centre. I’m sure that now the same thing happened. It’s different symptoms, evidently a different drug,’ Yarmysh said.
She told the radio station that she met Navalny to go to the airport in the Siberian city of Tomsk on Thursday morning when he seemed ‘absolutely fine.’
‘He only drank black tea in the airport,’ she said.
‘Straight after takeoff he quite quickly lost consciousness.’
Belarus president Alexander Lukashenko has blamed Navalny for fermenting the protests in his country, but without providing proof.
In one recent expose, Navalny claimed Putin’s ecology chief Svetlana Radionova was linked to a luxury property deal and that her wealth could not be explained.
Navalny has vowed his aim is to topple Putin and replace him as president.
His press secretary explained that after the plane took off from Tomsk, Navalny, 44, ‘said that he was feeling unwell and asked me for a napkin, he was sweating.
‘He asked me to speak to him because he needed to concentrate on the sound of the voice. I was talking to him, then they brought a trolley with water.
‘I asked if water would help, he said no. Then he went to the toilet, and after that he fainted.’
ALEXANDER LITVINENKO TO SERGEI SKRIPAL: HIGH-PROFILE KREMLIN CRITICS WHO WERE POISONED
Alexei Navalny is just the latest in a long line of Kremlin critics and Russian dissidents who have found themselves falling victim to poisonings.
Perhaps the most high-profile case was that of Alexander Litvinenko, a former FSB agent who defected and came to live in the UK, where he became a harsh critic of Putin – allegedly coining the phrase ‘Mafia state’.
In 2006 he was rushed to hospital and later diagnosed with poisoning using radioactive isotope polonium-210, a rare radioactive material that is thought to have been slipped into his tea at a sushi restaurant in London.
Alexander Litvinenko fell ill in November 2006 after radioactive polonium-210 was slipped into his tea at a sushi restaurant in London. He died from radiation poisoning three weeks later (pictured in hospital shortly before his death)
It took Litvinenko more than three weeks to die from the slow-acting poison, which removed all of his hair and left him emaciated, which is how he appeared in an infamous photo taken in hospital shortly before his death.
The UK government blamed Russia for the killing, and a public inquiry in 2015 resulted in a verdict that his death was the result of an FSB operation that was personally approved by Vladimir Putin and Nikolai Patrushev, then head of the FSB.
In 2018, another former FSB agent turned defector – Sergei Skripal, and his daughter Yulia – were also poisoned in the UK, using a rare nerve agent called Novichok which was developed by the Russian state.
It is thought that a pair of Russian GRU agents, later identified as Alexander Mishkin and Anatoliy Chepiga, used a perfume bottle to smear the agent on the door handle of Skripal’s home in Salisbury, where the pair were taken ill.
The pair were rushed to hospital in critical condition and spent several weeks in a coma before making a recovery and being released. Skripal has not been seen in public since, but daughter Yulia held a video interview with a tracheotomy scar on her neck, caused by medics cutting open her windpipe to hook her up to a ventilator.
The poisoning inadvertently killed Dawn Sturgess, after her partner Charlie Rowley found the perfume bottle containing the poison in a bin and gave it to her, which she sprayed on her wrist. Rowley also fell ill, but survived.
Sergei Skripal and daughter Yulia were poisoned with nerve agent Novichok at their home in Salisbury in 2018. The pair were taken to hospital in a coma but survived
Other prominent poisonings include…
VLADIMIR KARA-MURZA
The Russian opposition activist says he believes attempts were made to poison him in 2015 and 2017. A German laboratory later found elevated levels of mercury, copper, manganese and zinc in him, according to medical reports seen by Reuters. Moscow denied involvement.
GEORGI MARKOV
A Bulgarian writer, journalist and opponent of his country’s then-communist leadership who defected to the West in 1969, Markov died on Sept. 11, 1978 after he felt a sharp sting in his thigh while he waited for a bus on London’s Waterloo Bridge.
According to accounts of the incident, Markov looked behind him and saw a man picking up an umbrella that had fallen on the ground. The man mumbled ‘sorry’ before walking away.
Markov later died of what is believed to be poisoning from ricin, for which there is no antidote. Dissidents accused the Soviet KGB of being behind the killing.
ALEXANDER PEREPILICHNY
The 44-year-old Russian was found dead near his luxury home on an exclusive gated estate outside London after he had been out jogging in November 2012.
Perepilichny had sought refuge in Britain in 2009 after helping a Swiss investigation into a Russian money-laundering scheme. His sudden death raised suggestions he might have been murdered.
British police ruled out foul play despite suspicions he might have been murdered with a rare poison. An inquest into his death has yet to give a definitive conclusion as to how he died.
A pre-inquest hearing heard that traces of a rare and deadly poison from the gelsemium plant had been found in his stomach.
Perepilichny had enjoyed a large bowl of soup containing sorrel, a popular Russian dish. Russia denied involvement.
VIKTOR YUSHCHENKO
Yushchenko, then a Ukrainian opposition leader, was poisoned during the campaign for the 2004 presidential election in which he stood on a pro-western ticket against the pro-Moscow prime minister, Viktor Yanukovich.
He said he was poisoned while having dinner outside Kiev with officials from the Ukrainian security services. Russia denied any involvement.
His body was found to contain 1,000 times more dioxin than is normally present. His face and body were disfigured by the poisoning and he had dozens of operations in the aftermath.
He won the presidency in a re-run poll after Ukraine’s Supreme Court struck down results declaring Yanukovich the winner amid street protests dubbed the ‘Orange Revolution’.
Navalny has pledged to topple Vladimir Putin – who recently passed a law allowing him to rule for another eight years – from power and take his place
It was later reported that Navalny in intensive care had regained consciousness but was ‘struggling to speak’.
Alexander Murakhovsky, the chief doctor treating Navalny, assessed his condition as ‘grave’.
Separately, TVK citing the health ministry in Omsk reported that he remained unconscious.
This contradicted an earlier report that he had come round. Navalny coordinator in Tomsk, Kseniya Fadeeva, told Open Media: ‘He was completely fine before he drank tea at Tomsk airport.’
Vyacheslav Gimadi, a lawyer with Navalny’s foundation, said the team is requesting Russia’s Investigative Committee open a criminal probe.
‘There is no doubt that Navalny was poisoned because of his political stance and activity,’ Gimadi said in a tweet on Thursday.
This afternoon, Britain’s Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said he was ‘deeply concerned’ by reports of Navalny’s condition. Mr Raab said: ‘My thoughts are with him and his family.’
Navalny is not the first opposition figure to come down with a mysterious poisoning.
In 2018, Pyotr Verzilov, a member of Russia’s protest group Pussy Riot, ended up in an intensive care unit after a suspected poisoning and had to be flown to Berlin for treatment.
Opposition activist Vladimir Kara-Murza was hospitalized with poisoning symptoms twice – in 2015 and 2017.
Both said they believed they were poisoned for their political activity.
THE THORN IN PUTIN’S SIDE: WHO IS ALEXEI NAVALNY?
Born in 1976 to mother and father who owned a basket-weaving factory south of Moscow, Alexei Navalny spent his childhood between Russia and Ukraine, where his father’s family live.
He graduated with a law degree from the Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia in 1998, and then went on to study finance.
While politically active in opposition circles from 2000, Navalny first first rose to prominence in 2008 when he purchased stocks in major state-owned Russian companies, and began asking awkward questions at board meetings about their finances.
He also began blogging about alleged corruption within the firms, and linking it back to officials in Vladimir Putin’s government.
In 2010 he was awarded a scholarship to the World Fellows Program at Yale University, and spent a semester in the US.
Returning to Russia in 2011, he urged followers of his blog and social media to vote against Putin’s United Russia party in parliamentary elections.
The party won, but with a much-reduced majority and the victory was tarnished by allegations of vote-rigging and anti-corruption protests.
Navalny went on to lead mass demonstrations against Putin in the lead-up to the 2012 presidential elections, and was jailed several times in the process.
Putin easily won the election, and shortly afterwards Russia’s Investigative Committee launched a probe into Navalny.
In 2013 he was charged with embezzlement, convicted, and sentenced to five years in jail – a punishment he condemned as political.
To the surprise of many, he was released on bail so that he could run in the Moscow mayoral elections against Putin ally Sergey Sobyanin as head of the newly-formed Progress Party.
Navalny is pictured in Tomsk with his supporters, shortly before he fell ill
Navalny lost the vote, garnering 27 per cent of ballots, but this was seen as an unexpected success since he was effectively banned from appearing on TV.
The following year Navalny was placed under house arrest, before his embezzlement convictions were overturned by Russia’s Supreme Court following a similar ruling by the EU.
In 2016, he announced his intention to run against Putin in the 2018 election, prompting Russia’s state prosecutors to re-try him on the corruption charges.
He was subsequently convicted, meaning he was automatically barred from running in the election.
In 2017 he was left partially blind in one eye after attackers threw green dye used as a disinfectant at his face outside his office.
In August last year he suffered rashes and his face became swollen while he was in a police detention centre serving a short term for calling for illegal protests.
He was taken to hospital where doctors said he had suffered an allergic reaction but Navalny asked for an investigation into poisoning.
