Family and allies of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who remains in a coma in a Siberian hospital, were fighting for his transfer to a German clinic on Friday as local doctors insisted the politician is too unstable to be medevaced and refuse to give authorization for the transfer.
Navalny, a 44-year-old politician who is one of President Vladimir Putin's fiercest critics, was admitted to an intensive care unit in a coma at a hospital in the Siberian city of Omsk on Thursday, following what his supporters are calling a suspected poisoning that they believe was engineered by the Kremlin.
"Poisoning as a diagnosis remains on the back burner, but we don't believe that the patient suffered from poisoning," Kalinichenko told reporters Friday. "The ban on transferring Navalny is needed to stall and wait until the poison in his body can no longer be traced. Yet every hour of stalling creates a threat to his life," Yarmysh tweeted.
Last year, Navalny was rushed to a hospital from prison, where he was serving a sentence following an administrative arrest, with what his team said was suspected poisoning. Doctors said he had a severe allergic attack and discharged him back to prison the following day.
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