Russian hospital claims Putin critic Navalny wasn't poisoned, bars his medevac to Germany

The Russian opposition leader who is in a coma, possibly after being poisoned, is reportedly not being allowed to transfer out of a state-run hospital.

Alexei Navalny, prominent critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, was hospitalized this week after he suddenly became ill on a flight to Moscow from Siberia, and his spokesperson said that "We suspect that Alexei was poisoned by something mixed into [his] tea." On Friday, Navalny's spokesperson said he is not being permitted to transfer out of the state-run hospital where he's being treated, describing this refusal to let him leave as "an attempt on his life," CBS News reports. Doctors from Germany already arrived with the intention of transferring Navalny, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The hospital is claiming that Navalny's condition is too unstable for him to be transferred, The New York Times reports. Doctors also claim that "no poisons or traces of their presence" were found in Navalny's body and that "we do not believe that the patient has suffered poisoning," asserting that he suffered from "a sudden drop in blood sugar" due to a "metabolic disorder," per CBS.

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.

Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.

Sign up

But Navalny's wife, Yulia Navalnaya, alleges that officials aren't allowing him to be transported out of the hospital because they hope "to make the chemical substance that is in Alexey's body disappear," CNN reports. She added that "we of course cannot trust this hospital and we demand for Alexey to be given to us, so that we could have him treated in an independent hospital whose doctors we trust." Navalny's spokesperson also said, per the Journal, that the Russian doctors, "of course, didn’t make the decision, but the Kremlin did."