Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny was evacuated from Russia to Berlin’s Charité University Hospital.
Photo: Maja Hitij/Getty ImagesGerman doctors were attempting to determine what caused Alexei Navalny to become suddenly ill and lapse into a coma, hours after the Kremlin critic was evacuated to Berlin.
In a statement that apparently contradicted Russian doctors who said he was too sick and unstable to leave, the activist group that organized Mr. Navalny’s evacuation said Saturday that Mr. Navalny’s condition was stable, based on the evaluation of doctors on the medevac plane.
Mr. Navalny spent nearly 48 hours in a hospital in the Siberian city of Omsk, where he was admitted after collapsing on a flight to Moscow Thursday and lapsing into a coma. Mr. Navalny’s supporters say he drank tea at the airport before the flight that they believe was laced with poison.
The opposition politician’s supporters say doctors in Omsk refused to see his wife, Yulia Navalnaya. She said she believed doctors were delaying to make sure any potential traces of any toxins would be harder to find.
Doctors at the hospital in Berlin didn’t immediately disclose details of Mr. Navalny’s condition.
“Once again it confirms: there was nothing stopping them from transferring Navalny,” Mr. Navalny’s spokeswoman, Kira Yarmysh, wrote on Twitter.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said in previous days that the Kremlin would support any attempts to treat Mr. Navalny abroad and that the decision to delay transferring him was purely medical. He didn’t respond to a request for comment on Saturday.
Mr. Navalny has in recent years been one of Russia’s most prominent voices against President Vladimir Putin’s two-decade rule, leading protests against the Kremlin elite. His millions of followers on YouTube and Twitter have given him a nationwide platform that outpaces other opposition politicians.
Mr. Navalny’s condition and any potentially negative diagnosis from the German doctors could further inflame Russia’s beleaguered opposition movement.
“Our fight for freedom in Russia is a very, very difficult fight,” said Navalny ally Vladimir Milov, speaking on one of Mr. Navalny’s YouTube channels after the attack. “But there’s nowhere to go. We have to be strong.”
Alexei Navalny took part in a march in Moscow in Feb. 2019.
Photo: Pavel Golovkin/Associated PressMr. Milov said support for Mr. Navalny was strong in anti-Kremlin protests in Russia’s Far Eastern city of Khabarovsk, where demonstrators have been taking to the streets over the arrest of a popular local governor who defeated a pro-government candidate in an election two years ago, in what some see as a symptom of Mr. Putin’s heavy-handed rule.
On Friday, two protesters were detained in Moscow’s Red Square for picketing in support of Mr. Navalny, according to OVD-Info, a Russian organization that monitors political detentions.
In the past several days world leaders have expressed concern over Mr. Navalny’s condition. President Trump said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo would be reporting back to him on developments.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron offered assistance to Mr. Navalny and called for transparency in determining what caused his condition.
Mr. Navalny fell ill while onboard a commercial flight to Moscow from the Siberian city of Tomsk, where he was supporting independent politicians running in a coming election. He became pale, started sweating and left his seat to the airplane toilet about 40 minutes after drinking a cup of tea in an airport cafe, said Ms. Yarmysh, who was traveling with him. The plane was forced to make an emergency landing in Omsk.
After he was placed on a ventilator in the First Omsk Emergency Medical Hospital police swarmed the building, pressuring doctors to not share information with relatives and visitors, supporters say. By late Thursday Mr. Navalny’s team had secured an air ambulance from Germany, with the help of artist and activist Pyotr Verzilov, who had similarly been airlifted and admitted to the same hospital in 2018, with “symptoms of poisoning,” the clinic said at the time.
However, the medical plane sat on the runway for more than a day as doctors refused to transfer Mr. Navalny, saying he likely suffered from a severe low blood-sugar attack.
“He’s not in good condition and we can’t trust this hospital,” said Ms. Navalnaya at a news conference Friday.
Mr. Navalny’s supporters hope the German hospital, considered one of the best hospitals in the world and where Ms. Merkel has been treated, can help establish what caused Mr. Navalny to lose consciousness.
“Extensive medical diagnostics are currently in progress,” the hospital said in a statement. “After completing the examinations and after consulting the family, the treating physicians will comment on the disease and further treatment steps.”
“The fight for the life and health of Alexei has only begun, and much lies ahead, but at least the first step has been taken,” said Ms. Yarmysh.
Write to Thomas Grove at thomas.grove@wsj.com and William Boston at william.boston@wsj.com
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