Graphic shows timeline of attacks on foreign soil alleged to be by Russian agents.
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RUSSIA

Kremlin killing campaign

By Duncan Mil

August 21, 2020 - Updated August 22, 2020, 08:00GMT. The acutely ill Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has been flown from Siberia to Germany for treatment. He fell into a coma after drinking what his supporters suspect was poisoned tea. Doctors treating him in Omsk had insisted on Friday that he was too ill to be moved.

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 was sent by a German NGO -- the Cinema for Peace Foundation -- to Omsk to evacuate Navalny to Berlin for treatment at the Charite clinic. But the Omsk hospital had initially 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 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.

Chief Physician of Omsk Hospital, Alexander Murakhovsky, said in a video that Navalny most likely suffered a “metabolic disorder and lost consciousness due to a drop in blood sugar.”

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