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Russian Doctors Accused of Blocking Overseas Transfer of Aleksei Navalny Russian Doctors Clear Aleksei Navalny for Transfer to Germany
(about 5 hours later)
A Russian hospital is refusing to allow the prominent Kremlin critic Aleksei A. Navalny to be transferred abroad for treatment after a suspected poisoning, the opposition leader’s spokeswoman said on Friday, setting up a potential standoff as a plane from Germany arrived to fly him out of the country. BERLIN — Russian doctors decided late Friday to allow the transfer of a prominent Russian opposition figure to a German hospital for treatment of a suspected poisoning.
Mr. Navalny, President Vladimir V. Putin’s most persistent critic, was rushed to the hospital in the Siberian city of Omsk on Thursday after he appeared to suffer agonizing pain on a domestic flight after drinking a cup of tea at the airport in the Siberian city of Tomsk. The decision followed a day of delays, as Russian doctors and officials offered a variety of rationales for refusing to allow the opposition figure, Aleksei A. Navalny, to be transferred.
Mr. Navalny lost consciousness before he was hospitalized. His spokeswoman, Kira Yarmysh, said in a Twitter post on Friday that the head doctor at the hospital in Siberia was barring any transfer because his condition was not stable enough. But late in the day, German doctors who had flown in on an air ambulance from Germany were permitted to examine Mr. Navalny, and stated unequivocally that it was safe for him to travel.
The night before, the regional health authorities had said that a group of Russian doctors from Moscow’s most prestigious medical institutions were traveling to Siberia to help treat Mr. Navalny, but the opposition leader’s family and supporters were insisting that he be sent abroad for further treatment. “We heard back from the German medical team that they are able and willing to fly Mr. Navalny to Berlin, and that this is also the wish of his family,” the Cinema for Peace Foundation, which sent the medical team, said in a statement.
Ms. Yarmysh wrote that the refusal to allow Mr. Navalny’s transfer was effectively “an attempt on his life being carried out right now by doctors and the deceitful authorities that have authorized it.” As to the Russian officials’ contention that it was not safe for Mr. Navalny to travel, the statement said simply, “This is incorrect.”
Anatoly Kalinichenko, the deputy head doctor at the Omsk hospital, told reporters on Friday morning that doctors had not found anything to support the idea that Mr. Navalny was poisoned. The foundation that sent the plane, a Challenger 604 air ambulance, was established by a Berlin-based movie producer, Jaka Bizilj. He had previously arranged the transfer of a member of the Russian protest group Pussy Riot, who was also likely poisoned. After the flight, Mr. Navalny was expected to be treated at a leading research hospital in Berlin, Charité.
He did not explain, however, why a healthy 44-year-old man had fallen ill so suddenly and violently, and there was speculation among Mr. Navalny’s supporters that Russia did not want Mr. Navalny to leave because German doctors might discover the cause of his illness. “We were working like crazy through every possible channel to make this happen,” Mr. Bizilj said in a telephone interview. “But I think the breakthrough was the report from the German medical team.”
Footage from the Moscow-bound airplane on Thursday shared on social media recorded him groaning before losing consciousness, and the plane made an emergency landing in Omsk. He was transported on a gurney to an ambulance waiting on the tarmac. Mr. Bizilj stressed that the German doctors were not toxicologists and did not give any assessment of what had caused Mr. Navalny’s illness.
Doctors at the No. 1 Clinical Hospital in Omsk initially said that Mr. Navalny was on a ventilator in serious condition but later reported that his condition, though still grave, had stabilized. Since Mr. Navalny’s arrival Thursday at a hospital in the Siberian city of Omsk following an emergency airplane landing, his family and associates have been bitterly critical of the authorities, who have refused to release detailed information on his condition, denied he was poisoned and contended that he was too unstable medically for travel.
At the request of Mr. Navalny’s family, the Berlin-based movie producer Jaka Bizilj said his foundation was flying an air ambulance to Omsk and hoped to bring Mr. Navalny to a Berlin hospital, Charité. The refusal to allow Mr. Navalny’s transfer was effectively “an attempt on his life being carried out right now by doctors and the deceitful authorities that have authorized it,” Mr. Navalny’s spokeswoman, Kira Yarmysh, said.
Mr. Bizilj said in an interview on Friday that the plane had touched down that morning and was still waiting for the chance to bring Mr. Navalny onboard and take him to Berlin. Mr. Navalny’s personal doctor, Anastasia Vasilyeva, said in an interview Friday that she believed her patient was poisoned, and that the Russian authorities were delaying Mr. Navalny’s departure long enough for the poison in his system to diminish and become difficult or impossible to identify.
“I told the crew to stay there and not to fly back without Navalny,” he said, adding that talks were continuing with the Russian authorities. “Until now it has been a humanitarian initiative, to help save somebody whose life is under threat, but now it seems to be a political thing.” The standoff dragged through the day Friday as Mr. Navalny remained in a coma while the medical evacuation plane sent from Germany waited at the airport.
In 2018, Mr. Bizilj, whose Cinema for Peace Foundation helped produce a documentary about the Russian musical group Pussy Riot, organized a transfer to Berlin for one of the band members, Pyotr Verzilov, after he said he had been poisoned. Mr. Bizilj said that Mr. Verzilov had asked him on Thursday whether he could help arrange the same for Mr. Navalny. He said on Thursday that the biggest concern was whether Mr. Navalny would be stable enough to travel on the five-hour flight. Mr. Navalny, who is Russian President Vladimir V. Putin’s most persistent critic, was rushed to the hospital Thursday after collapsing in agonizing pain on a domestic flight after drinking a cup of tea in an airport café before departure.
Ms. Yarmysh, who was traveling with Mr. Navalny in Siberia when he fell ill, has said that he was poisoned, probably by something put into his tea at the airport in Tomsk, and had lapsed into unconsciousness. Mr. Navalny’s wife, Yulia, sent Mr. Putin a letter Friday requesting permission to evacuate her husband to Europe for treatment. The Kremlin had earlier said it was open to allowing Mr. Navalny to be flown abroad. But after the German hospital airplane arrived Friday morning, delays ensued.
As his supporters said Mr. Navalny was fighting for his life, speculation of foul play escalated, particularly after his personal physician and a fellow opposition activist, Anastasia Vasilyeva, was denied access to his medical records and the intensive care ward where he was being treated. The head doctor at Hospital No. 1 in Omsk, where Mr. Navalny was being treated, told journalists that he could not release his patient even if relatives requested he do so, because Mr. Navalny’s medical condition was too unstable.
Ms. Yarmysh said on Thursday that Mr. Navalny’s wife, Yulia, had been allowed into his ward after being delayed but that documents needed to fly him out of Omsk to a hospital elsewhere had not been provided. “We cannot allow relatives to take responsibility,” Dr. Aleksandr Murakhovsky said. “Clinical signs raise concerns for us about his transport.”
Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and President Emmanuel Macron of France, meeting in France, offered their assistance, including medical help and possible asylum. Dr. Murakhovsky defended a plan under which Mr. Navalny was to be treated in Siberia by Russian specialists from Moscow, who also flew to Omsk overnight. The Moscow doctors, he said, are no worse than the German ones and should be allowed to do their work.
The Kremlin initially said it would facilitate Mr. Navalny’s transfer on request, but seemed to back away from this on Friday as doctors in Omsk, who would jump at an order from Mr. Putin to get Mr. Navalny on the plane to Germany, dug in their heels over not letting their patient fly. The mixed messages from the authorities added to suspicions that they want to delay Mr. Navalny’s departure to prevent treatment by foreign doctors who would be more likely to publicly identify any poison remaining in his system. Dr. Murakhovsky, who has a portrait of Mr. Putin in his office and is reportedly a member of the ruling political party, United Russia, also offered the first diagnosis of what had befallen Mr. Navalny on the flight.
The Kremlin, which had wished Mr. Navalny a speedy recovery, insisted on Thursday that it was too early to say what caused his illness. “There are working diagnoses,” Dr. Murakhovsky said. “The main working diagnosis which we are most inclining toward is an imbalance in carbohydrates, that is, metabolic disorder. This can be caused by a sharp drop in blood sugar, in the plane, which resulted in loss of consciousness.” He said doctors had found nothing to support the idea that Mr. Navalny had been poisoned.
Ms. Yarmysh tweeted that Ivan Zhdanov, the director of Mr. Navalny’s organization, the Anti-Corruption Foundation, had been told by the police in the Omsk hospital that the poison inside him was dangerous not only to the patient but to those around him. His contention that Mr. Navalny, an otherwise healthy 44-year-old, had suffered from low blood sugar was quickly dismissed as ridiculous by the opposition leader’s physician, Dr. Vasilyeva.
But the police, according to Ms. Yarmysh’s account of what they told Mr. Zhdanov, would not disclose the name of the poison because of “investigation confidentiality,” a term often used in Russia when the authorities want to hide embarrassing or damaging information. “This is not a diagnosis,” she said. “If it were just a metabolic disorder he would not be in a coma or on ventilation.” Low blood sugar could be corrected quickly with an injection, she said.
Tass, the state-owned news agency, quoted an unidentified law enforcement source as saying that Mr. Navalny could have “taken something himself” before boarding the plane. But he joined a long list of opponents of Mr. Putin who have been suddenly afflicted by bizarre and sometimes fatal medical emergencies, often after drinking tea. The Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, then offered another reason for delaying Mr. Navalny’s departure, noting that he had first become ill while on an ascending airplane. If the plane’s ascent had caused the coma, then another flight so soon might “threaten the life of the patient,” he said.
Melissa Eddy and Andrew Higgins contributed reporting. “That’s why the doctor thinks that for now, while there is no clarity about the cause, the patient’s transport by air is impossible.”
Dr. Vasilyeva rejected Mr. Peskov’s theory as “complete nonsense.”
In the interview, Dr. Vasilyeva described a curious encounter earlier reported by Mr. Navalny’s wife, Yulia, and members of his political movement but denied by the Russian authorities.
Dr. Vasilyeva said that she, Yulia Navalnaya and the chief doctor at the Siberian hospital, Dr. Murakhovsky, were discussing treatment when a policewoman entered the room and said Mr. Navalny was poisoned with a substance so lethal it could endanger “those near him.”
Dr. Vasilyeva said the policewoman, who did not introduce herself, had said the substance was “very dangerous” and showed Dr. Murakhovsky the name of the toxin, written on a phone screen. The policewoman said she could not reveal it to others because it was “an investigative secret.”
It was unclear whether this revelation, raising the prospect of a radioactive or chemical threat, was intended as another argument against transporting Mr. Navalny to Germany for treatment. The Russian security services are suspected of using a range of exotic poisons to eliminate opponents, including radioactive polonium 210 and a military nerve agent.
“They are just artificially delaying so no toxic substance will be found in his blood,” Dr. Vasilyeva said. How long this will take, she said, “only they know.”
The Russian authorities have consistently denied any evidence of poisoning. Dr. Murakhovsky, at a news conference Friday, denied this account of the meeting as conveyed by Mr. Navalny’s wife and personal doctor. He said tests for toxins in Mr. Navalny’s blood were all negative.
Melissa Eddy reported from Berlin and Andrew E. Kramer from Moscow.