From Putin, With Malevolence

"We assume that Alexei was poisoned with something mixed into his tea -- Doctors say the toxin was absorbed faster through the hot liquid. Alexei is now unconscious."                                                                                                       "They [doctors] are clearly playing for time and are not saying what they know."  Kira Yarmysh, Alexei Navalny, Russian Opposition Leader's spokesperson 

"Doctors are really working on saving his life right now. There is no certainty that the cause is poison but this is one potential version."                                          "The patient's condition is stable."                                                                           Anatoly Kalinichenko, Omak Hospital deputy head

Mr Navalny fell ill during a flight on Thursday  Reuters

"[It was] like something was switched off - like medicine mode off, cover-up operation mode on - and the doctors refused to co-operate any more, refused to give any information even to Alexei's wife."                                "The doctors who were helping to do the paperwork to make the transportation of Alexei to Charité possible started to say that he's not any more transportable, he's not any more stable, contradicting themselves."            Mr Navalny's aide Leonid Volkov

Russian President Vladimir Putin is not known to take aggressively loud and conspicuous opposition to his one-man rule of Russia kindly. Coincidentally, Russian Opposition Leader Alexei Navalny was left "fighting for his life" in an induced coma on Thursday as a result of a targeted poisoning, according to his closest colleagues. A flight to Moscow from Tomsk, Siberia went awry when Mr. Navalny suddenly was afflicted with pain to the extent that the pilot made an emergency landing so emergency medical treatment could be found for a robust, healthy man who instantly became an unconscious patient. 

His spokeswoman, Kira Yarmyah, explained that Mr. Navalny had eaten nothing, and had been refreshed with a cup of hot tea at the Tomsk airport prior to boarding his flight. "At the start of the flight he went to the toilet and didn't come back. He started feeling really sick. They struggled to bring him round and he was screaming in pain", related a fellow passenger on the flight, Pavel Lebedev.

He was taken to the Omsk hospital for treatment where a hospital representative explained he had been placed on a ventilator in intensive care and was considered to be in stable, albeit serious condition. His wife Yulia, was permitted to enter the ward to see her husband after initially being informed she could not, but the hospital would not permit his personal physician to visit his patient.

With memories evoked of previous strange occurrences afflicting other critics of Mr. Putin and the Kremlin; the 2006 shooting death of journalist Anna Politkovskaya over her sharp criticism of Mr. Putin's role in the Chechen conflict, the death of Alexander Litvinenko, poisoned with a radioactive substance in London the same year, and the attack on Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury in 2018, there's a sense of deja vu at play.

The heavy police presence at the hospital only served to increase a sense of impending doom. Which no doubt helped to lead Germany and France to offer medical care to Mr. Navalny, which his wife grasped at. Plans to move the critically ill man to a hospital in Europe saw no enthusiasm among Russian officials, and the doctors at the hospital balked at moving the patient, claiming to do so would be inimical to his survival.

Medical experts from Germany were allowed to see Mr Navalny Reuters

Despite which, a team of specialists in treating coma patients with an air ambulance was dispatched from Germany to bring the unconscious Mr. Navalny for treatment abroad, even as Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov insisted that Mr. Navalny was being given emergency treatment by the most skilled doctors, and police were not investigating poisoning as a possible cause of his sudden collapse.

Mr. Navalny's criticism of Vladimir Putin, loud and to the point is popular among Navalny supporters which certainly explains why he had been barred from running in the most recent presidential election and for his impudence had been imprisoned on a number of occasions as penalty for organizing anti-Kremlin demonstrations. Other penalties were also exacted against him when he experienced an acute allergic reaction his doctor felt might have been caused by a "toxic agent".

Navalny was taken by ambulance to the airport in Omsk on Saturday morning  Reuters

He was too ill to be moved, according to the doctors treating him in Omsk, but later Friday they allowed that his condition was sufficiently stable for the planned flight to Berlin when the medically equipped plane ordered by the German NGO Cinema for Peace, who had arranged for the flight to Berlin and treatment at the Charite hospital took action. "Alexei Navalny has been loaded into an ambulance and they are taking him to the airport", Kira Yarmysh announced early Saturday.