Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Russian opposition politician and prominent Kremlin critic, has been placed in a medically induced coma after suffering organ failure caused by poison, his wife has said.
Kara-Murza was admitted to an intensive-care unit in Moscow last week in a critical condition. At the time, his wife, Yevvgenia, told Radio Free Europe he had "low blood pressure" and "respiratory insufficiency".
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She has since said he suffered "severe intoxication by an unknown substance". Samples of his blood, hair and fingernails have been sent for testing in France and Israel.
Kara-Murza fell ill while taking a train ride from the Siberian city of Tver, according to the Daily Beast's Michael Weiss. Kara-Murza had just screened a film about former deputy prime minister Boris Nemtsov, a political opponent of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Nemtsov was shot dead near the Kremlin in February 2015.
"Putin's enemies have had a bad habit over the years of ingesting things they shouldn’t, from dioxin to polonium to killer flowers," says Weiss.
In May 2015, Kara-Murza was diagnosed with acute kidney failure and tests found high levels of heavy metals in his blood, but no criminal case was opened. "The symptoms are apparently similar to those that were then," said his lawyer of Kara-Murza's current condition.
The 2015 poisoning came just "three months after Nemstov was murdered, in a case that could be compared to that of former KGB spy Alexander Litvinenko in the UK", says Buzzfeed News. An exhaustive British inquiry into Litvinenko's death determined that Putin had likely ordered the murder through the use of polonium, a radioactive isotope.
Many eyes are now on US President Donald Trump to see how he responds to the Kara-Murzas' claims.
"Kara-Murza is the sort of freedom fighter that the United States has always defended," says the Washington Post, and if Trump does nothing on his behalf it will show his administration is "ready to appease Mr Putin at the price of American values".
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