After an hour spent on the tarmac, he was taken by ambulance and under police escort to the Charité hospital, one of the most famous in Europe. “His state of health is stable,” said Jaka Bizilj, the leader of the German NGO Cinema for Peace, which chartered the ambulance plane in which the 44-year-old opponent, accompanied by his wife, was transported. In fact, he was still in a coma last night. In the morning, the management of the hospital let it be known that the doctors were carrying out “a comprehensive medical diagnosis” but warned that “the examinations will take time”.
Contradictions on the presence or not of poison
Will the results confirm the suspicions of those close to the opponent? They claim that he was poisoned while drinking black tea at Tomsk airport. Ivan Zhdanov, director of the anti-corruption foundation created by Navalny, said in particular that the doctors had detected in the body of the lawyer a substance which could prove “dangerous for those who approach him”.
Officially, however, doctors at the hospital in Omsk, this town in Siberia where Navalny was treated until his transfer, have ruled out any poisoning. Friday was evoked the trail of a “carbohydrate imbalance”, caused by a drop in blood sugar levels. On the same day, the Omsk Interior Ministry claimed that 2-ethylhexyl diphenyl phosphate, a substance frequently used in the manufacture of plastic cups, had been found on the hair, nails and clothing of the opponent.
Yesterday, it was the Ministry of Health of the Omsk region which claimed that “caffeine and alcohol” had been found in his urine. What to accredit the thesis advanced by media close to the Kremlin: the opponent had drunk more than reason the day before his trip. “Wrong,” retorted the activist’s personal doctor, Anastasiya Vasilyeva, who swears he does not drink alcohol.
The mystery of the sponsor
These multiple versions raise the question of the credibility of the medical authorities, in particular the chief doctor of the Omsk hospital, Aleksandr Murakhovsky. While the German practitioners who came to Navalny’s bed considered that it was possible to transfer him to Berlin, their Russian colleague, a member of United Russia, Vladimir Putin’s party, opposed it for long hours, claiming a state too unstable. According to Anastasiya Vasilyeva, he was simply trying to buy time, so that the traces of poison became undetectable.
“In view of the symptoms and past experiences in Russia, there is little doubt that Navalny was poisoned,” said researcher Tatiana Stanovaya of the Carnegie Moscow Center. Over the past twenty years, more than a dozen Russian politicians, journalists and opponents have actually been victims of poisoning. Last year, Navalny himself suffered, according to authorities, from an acute allergic reaction while serving a 30-day prison sentence. A doctor had concluded that there was poisoning.
Even before this hypothesis is confirmed, THE question is already being asked. Could Vladimir Putin, one of the lawyer’s main targets, be the sponsor? While the Kremlin’s guilt has never been proven in previous cases, there is little doubt that it is capable of eliminating troublesome opponents. However, Tatiana Stanovaya does not believe it. “Putin does not attach such importance to Navalny and does not consider him a legitimate political force,” says the researcher.
It would seem implausible, however, that the decision to kill Navalny was taken without the approval of the Russian president. “It is possible, this was particularly the case during the assassination of Boris Nemtsov in 2015, continues the political scientist. It is possible, this time again, that people close to the Kremlin who consider Navalny as a threat to the regime decided to eliminate it. ”
The lawyer, who conducts vitriolic investigations into corruption, has also made up many enemies throughout the country: senior officials, governors, oligarchs. In Tomsk, where he came to support candidates for parliamentary elections, he allegedly gathered compromising information on local officials in United Russia.
The JDD.fr
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