Opposition activist Alexey Navalny was poisoned with a substance from a group of cholinesterase inhibitors. It is not yet known which one exactly. The intoxication is indicated by clinical data, says the press release of the Berlin clinic Charité, where the politician was recently taken.
Berlin doctors specify that another examination is scheduled for a more accurate identification of the substance. The action of the toxin has been proved several times in independent laboratories, the report says.
Navalny is in an artificial coma with no serious threat to his life. However, doctors do not rule out long-term negative consequences of the poisoning, “especially in case of the nervous system,” while the outcome of the disease remains unclear.
The group of cholinesterase inhibitors includes many compounds, including domestic and agricultural insecticides (such as dichlorophos), as well as chemical warfare agents. The latter include the Novichok, which, according to the British authorities, was used to poison former GRU colonel Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia.
After Charité’s statement, Navalny’s spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh tweeted that the words of the opposition leader’s comrades-in-arms about his poisoning were now confirmed by tests. Anastasia Vasilieva, the politician’s doctor, in her turn, believes that the patient could have been saved much faster.
When asked to comment on this statement, Vasilyeva said she couldn’t add anything to it.
The Ministry of Health of the Omsk region states that the doctors at the clinic where Navalny was placed are ready to provide their colleagues from Charité with “both the results of laboratory tests and samples of the patient’s biomaterials,” which will allow us to “track the entire clinical dynamics of his vital signs”.
At a press conference, Alexander Murakhovsky, chief physician of Omsk’s BSMP-1, was unable to answer the question of the Dozhd journalist about the “people in civilian clothes” who worked on the territory of his hospital. However, he called Alexei Navalny a “political patient”.
“I can’t say that they were doing anything there. Yes, they arrived. Everything’s okay? Yeah, fine. And they were gone,” said Murakhovsky.
In the morning of August 20, Russian politician Alexei Navalny was returning to Moscow from Tomsk from the shooting of another investigation. In Tomsk and Novosibirsk, he also supported his supporters in local elections. Before his flight, the opposition activist had tea in a cafe at the Tomsk airport. His spokesperson Kira Yarmysh said that Navalny did not drink anything else on the plane and had not eaten anything since morning.
During the flight he felt sick, so the plane made an emergency landing in Omsk, from where Navalny was taken to the first emergency hospital in Omsk. The politician went into a coma. For two days the opposition member’s family wanted him to be sent to Germany for treatment, but Omsk doctors claimed that he was untransportable. At the same time they were not in contact with the family, and Russian special services were on duty in the office of the chief physician and in the hospital itself.
According to Omsk doctors, the politician felt badly because of metabolic disorders. Navalny’s comrades-in-arms believe that he was poisoned. Russian doctors said that they had not found any traces of substances that could be considered poisonous.
