The Russia connectionKremlin Refuses to Have Navalny Flown to Germany for Treatment, or have German Doctors Examine Him in Russia
The Kremlin says it will not allow opposition leader Aleksei Navalny, who is in a coma in a Siberian hospital with suspected poisoning, to be flown to Germany for treatment because of “medical reasons.” The attending physician at the Omsk hospital’s ICU said Navalny suffers from “metabolic disorder,” and that there was no need for foreign specialists to examine him. Navalny’s wife was not allowed to see him. Navalny’s personal physician said that “they are waiting three days so that there are no traces of poison left in the body, and in Europe it will no longer be possible to identify this toxic substance.” Other medical experts agree with her, and also support her assertion that “metabolic disorder” is not a diagnosis but a condition which, among other things, can be caused by poisoning.
The Kremlin says that a decision to refuse the transfer to Germany of opposition leader Aleksei Navalny, who is in a coma in a Siberian hospital with suspected poisoning, is based only on medical grounds.
“This is a question of a purely medical decision,” President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told journalists on 21 August after Russian doctors said Navalny was not well enough to be moved from the Omsk hospital where he is being treated.
The 44-year-old anti-corruption campaigner became ill on 20 August while on a flight to Moscow from the Siberian city of Tomsk, forcing the aircraft to make an unscheduled landing in Omsk, where he was transported by ambulance to the hospital.
A group of German doctors arrived at the Omsk hospital on 21 August after traveling there on an air ambulance that has been waiting in Omsk to pick up Navalny, who was put on a ventilator in intensive care.
He was to be treated at Berlin’s Charite hospital upon his arrival in the German capital.
After offering to have him flown to Germany for treatment, the German government said on 21 August that Navalny’s life must be saved.
“The most important priority is of course that Mr. Navalny’s life can be saved and that he can recover,” government spokesman Steffen Seibert told reporters in Berlin.
But Aleksandr Murakhovsky, the head doctor at Omsk Emergency Hospital No. 1, said earlier on 21 August that although Navalny’s condition had improved a little, attempting to move him could pose a risk to his life.
Navalny’s spokeswoman, Kira Yarmysh, called the hospital’s decision “an attempt on his life being carried out right now by doctors and the deceitful authorities that have authorized it.”
“It is deadly to remain in the Omsk hospital without equipment or a diagnosis,” she tweeted.
There has been no official diagnosis of Navalny’s condition, but his team believes he was poisoned because of his activities.
Yarmysh said she believed the politician was poisoned when he drank tea he had bought at the Tomsk airport.
But Murakhovsky told journalists the most likely cause of Navalny’s condition was a disorder pertaining to his metabolism of carbohydrates, according to comments carried by state news agency TASS.
“Today we have some working diagnoses. The main one is…a metabolic disorder,” Murakhovsky said, adding that Navalny’s condition “may be caused by a sudden drop of blood sugar levels.”
