Moscow — Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was in a coma Thursday at a Siberian hospital after drinking tea laced with poison, according to his representatives. Russian doctors gave conflicting information on his condition, claiming his was stable but his life was still at risk.
Earlier in the day his spokeswoman said the politician was comatose and on a ventilator after falling ill during a flight.
The 44-year-old is a harsh critic of President Vladimir Putin, and he has been the target of years of harassment, including numerous arrests and a previous suspected poisoning. Spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh said on Twitter that he started feeling unwell on a flight back to Moscow from Siberia, suffering “toxic poisoning.”
Video posted to social media appeared to show paramedics arriving inside the plane, as someone can be heard moaning loudly off camera. Other unconfirmed social media videos appeared show him lying motionless, being wheeled into an ambulance at the airport.
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The plane made an emergency landing in the Siberian city of Omsk and she said he was admitted to a hospital “in a coma in grave condition.”
While state media quoted some doctors at the hospital as saying his condition had improved and he was stable, Yarmysh’s said in tweets that his “condition has not changed yet,” and that he remained unconscious without an official diagnosis.
She dismissed suggestions from unidentified Russian government officials that Navalny had merely suffered food poisoning as “complete nonsense.”
Yarmysh told the independent Echo Moskvy radio station earlier that Navalny had started sweating on the plane and asked her to talk to him so that he could “focus on a sound of a voice.” She said he then went to the bathroom and lost consciousness.
Yarmysh said there must have been something in tea Navalny drank Thursday morning at the airport, which she said was the only thing he’d consumed before the flight.
“Doctors are saying the toxin was absorbed quicker with hot liquid,” she tweeted, adding that Navalny’s team called police to the hospital.
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Navalny was rushed to a hospital last year from a prison where he was serving a sentence following an administrative arrest, with what his team said was suspected poisoning. Doctors claimed he’d suffered a severe allergic attack, and discharged him back to prison the following day.
Navalny’s Foundation for Fighting Corruption has been exposing graft among government officials, including some at the highest level. Last month, the politician had to shut the foundation after a financially devastating lawsuit from Yevgeny Prigozhin, a businessman with close ties to the Kremlin.
The most prominent member of Russia’s opposition, Navalny campaigned to challenge Putin in the 2018 presidential election, but was barred from running. He set up a network of campaign offices across Russia and has since put forward opposition candidates in regional elections, challenging members of Putin’s ruling United Russia party.
In the interview with Echo Moskvy, Yarmysh said she believed the suspected poisoning was connected to this year’s regional election campaign. Vyacheslav Gimadi, a lawyer with Navalny’s foundation, said his team was 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 tweeted on Thursday.
Like many other opposition politicians in Russia, Navalny has been frequently detained by law enforcement and harassed by pro-Kremlin groups. In 2017, he was attacked by several men who threw antiseptic in his face, damaging one eye.
Belarus’ authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko accused Navalny last week of organizing unprecedented mass protests against his re-election that have rocked Russia’s ex-Soviet neighbor since August 9. He did not provide any evidence, and that claim was one of many blaming foreign forces for the unrest.
As CBS News correspondent Roxana Saberi reports, Russian agents have been accused of poisoning a number of Kremlin foes, including a former Russian double agent targeted in England two years ago with a deadly nerve agent.
There was no immediate response from the Kremlin to the claims that Navalny was poisoned on Thursday.