8/22/20
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny arrived in a stable condition for medical treatment in Germany Saturday after appeals by his team that included his wife writing directly to President Vladimir Putin. Navalny, 44, fell violently ill and lost consciousness an hour into a flight from the Siberian city of Tomsk to Moscow on Thursday. After his plane made an emergency landing he was transported to Omsk Emergency Hospital No. 1, where a doctor told journalists the hospital was “working on saving his life.” Navalny has remained in a coma and on a ventilator since. The opposition leader’s close aides had pushed for the Kremlin critic to be transferred to a leading German toxicology center, citing a lack of vital equipment at the Siberian regional hospital and a worry that Russian doctors would be pressured by the authorities to withhold details of the cause of his illness. An air ambulance left Berlin early Friday morning to collect Navalny and bring him to the Charité hospital in the city, but the Omsk hospital’s head doctor Alexander Murakhovsky said Navalny’s condition was unstable and he could not be transferred, triggering a standoff.
But late Friday evening, around 10 pm Omsk time, deputy chief doctor Anatoly Kalinichenko told journalists gathered outside his hospital that the Kremlin critic’s condition was now stable enough for him to fly. “We do not object to transfer to another hospital. It will happen today,” the state-run TASS news agency cited him as saying. In a joint press conference on Thursday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron said their countries were ready to provide Navalny with medical support. After Russian doctors barred his transfer, Navalny’s wife appealed directly to President Vladimir Putin in a letter. Asking for permission that he be allowed to be transferred to Germany, she wrote that her husband “needs qualified medical assistance.”