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 حملة اغتيالات ضد المنتقدين للكرملين infographic
Graphic shows timeline of attacks on foreign soil by Russian agents.
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روسيا

حملة اغتيالات ضد المنتقدين للكرملين

By Duncan Mil

August 21, 2020 - Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is unconscious and in intensive care in a Siberian hospital after apparently being poisoned. If confirmed, it would be the latest in a series of attacks on Kremlin critics.

Anatoly Kalinichenko, deputy head physician at the Omsk Hospital treating Navalny, said poison was not involved. No toxins were found in Navalny’s blood or urine so “we don’t believe that the patient suffered poisoning,” Kalinichenko told local journalists in a news conference.

Navalny’s wife Yulia Navalnaya said the doctors could not be trusted after Navalny fell ill on a flight to Moscow on Thursday.

An air ambulance has been sent by a German NGO -- the Cinema for Peace Foundation -- to Omsk in the hopes of evacuating Navalny to Berlin for treatment at the Charite clinic. But the Omsk hospital has said it is too dangerous.

The director of Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), Ivan Zhdanov, claimed that while in the hospital a member of the police told him “it’s a deadly substance. This substance poses a threat not just to Alexey’s life but also to others. Everybody around should wear protective suits.”

According to a state-run RIA Novosti report, experts have ruled out a stroke, heart attack or infections including coronavirus.

The “main working diagnosis is a metabolic disorder which caused a sharp drop in blood sugar,” RIA reported, quoting chief Physician of Omsk Hospital Alexander Murakhovsky.

Sources
PUBLISHED: 21/08/2020; STORY: Graphic News; PICTURES: Associated Press, Getty Images
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