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Alexei Navalny could be incapacitated for months, says ally
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Russian opposition leader’s wife visits him in Berlin hospital as founder of NGO that evacuated him to Germany says he is expected to survive
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Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny will survive what his allies believe was a poisoning but could be out of action for months, the founder of the activist group that sent the air ambulance to fly him to Germany has said.
“Navalny will survive the poison attack, but be incapacitated for months as a politician,” Jaka Bizilj, the founder of the NGO Cinema for Peace Foundation, told German tabloid Bild on Sunday.
He said that Navalny had coped well with the flight, but added this did not change his “worrying overall situation”.
Navalny’s wife, Yulia Navalnaya, and aide Leonid Volkov visited the Russian opposition leader in hospital in Berlin on Sunday but did not speak to reporters. There has been no word yet from the Charite hospital in the capital on his condition.
Navalny’s team had been due to host a briefing via YouTube on Sunday evening to discuss “everything we know so far about Alexei’s poisoning”, but subsequently cancelled it saying they were not ready, press secretary Kira Yarmysh and campaign HQ head Leonid Volkov wrote on Twitter.
Early on Monday, Yarmysh wrote: “At the moment, there are no new details about Alexei’s health. We ask everyone to be patient and not react to false messages. As soon as verified information appears, we will immediately let you know.”
Earlier, a Russian newspaper alleged there was extensive government surveillance of Navalny during a trip to Siberia before his collapse on Thursday.
Yarmysh had complained of being followed during the trip, calling the police surveillance “absolutely obvious” during a stopover in the city of Novosibirsk. The next leg in the city of Tomsk was “relatively calm”, she said, until Navalny fell ill during a return flight to Moscow. He was transferred to Berlin’s Charité hospital on Saturday.
But in an article published by Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper, police sources described following the politician’s movements and meetings in Tomsk, identifying the apartment where he was staying by tracking a sushi delivery to an associate, collecting his receipts from a local store, and even following him during a short trip out of town for an evening swim in the Tom river.
The leak to the paper was apparently made to show that Navalny was not poisoned in the city, but it revealed the degree to which his activity was scrutinised by law enforcement.
“The security services are inclined to believe that if the events connected to a poisoning did take place, then they probably occurred at the airport or in the plane,” the newspaper wrote. “His movements and contacts in the city were studied thoroughly.”
Responding to the piece, Yarmysh told the Guardian: “We were aware of the fact the we were followed … What is surprising is the fact that they decided to reveal it to the public so casually, like it isn’t a big deal to follow ordinary citizens and even claim their bills from the supermarket.”
Navalny fell into a coma after drinking what supporters suspect was poisoned tea. He arrived at Berlin’s Tegel airport early on Saturday after a 12-hour standoff at a hospital in the Siberian city of Omsk when doctors refused to release him, saying he was too ill to move.
Navalny’s supporters have accused the Omsk hospital of endangering his life by delaying his transport and claimed doctors were under government pressure to cover up any evidence of an attack. Officials in Omsk said on Saturday that tests did not show he had been poisoned.
Navalny’s release came only after his wife, Yulia, directly petitioned Vladimir Putin to allow him to be transported to Germany, and after Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron voiced concerns about Navalny’s health.
Yarmysh said: “The fight for Alexei’s life and health is only beginning and much has to be done, but at least now we’ve made the first step.”
