Leading Putin foe Alexei Navalny ‘is poisoned’ and rushed unconscious from plane in a ‘grave’ condition after ‘toxin was poured into his tea
Alexei Navalny, Vladimir Putin’s arch-rival and critic, has been rushed unconscious to hospital after apparently being poisoned.
The lawyer and anti-corruption campaigner fell ill on a flight from Tomsk to Moscow, forcing the plane to make an emergency landing in the Siberian city of Omsk.
Video shows the Navalny being stretchered from the aircraft into a waiting ambulance before being rushed to intensive care.
He is now in a coma and hooked up to a ventilator, with doctors saying his condition is ‘grave’, press secretary Kira Yarmysh revealed.
Alexei Navalny, arch political rival and critic of Valdimir Putin has been rushed to hospital after apparently being poisoned (pictured, Navalny is taken into an ambulance)
Kira Yarmysh, Navalny’s press secretary, says she suspects poison was added to a cup of tea that he was pictured drinking at the airportAlexei Navalny screams in pain after drinking alleged poisoned tea
Yarmysh said she suspects poison was added to tea he was pictured drinking at the airport, in an image widely circulated on social media.
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 was underway, the manager said.
Medics have given a preliminary diagnosis of ‘toxic poisoning’, but no test results have yet come back.
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.Putin foe rushed off plane unconscious with suspected ‘poisoning’
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
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’
‘The plane made an emergency landing in Omsk.’
Navalny is seen as Putin’s most charismatic and potentially dangerous foe.
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 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.
‘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.’
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.’
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.
