BERLIN — Alexei Navalny’s wife and a top aide visited him Sunday in a Berlin hospital where the comatose Russian dissident is being treated by German doctors after a suspected poisoning.
Navalny was flown to Germany on Saturday from Siberia on Saturday after doctors determined he was stable enough to be brought to the capital’s Charité hospital for treatment.
After his arrival, hospital spokeswoman Manuela Zingl said that the 44-year-old would be undergoing extensive diagnostic tests, and that doctors wouldn’t comment on his illness or treatment until they were able to evaluate the results.
On Sunday, Navalny’s wife, Yulia Navalnaya, and aide Leonid Volkov visited the opposition leader in the hospital but did not speak to reporters.
Navalny, a politician and corruption investigator who is one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest critics, fell ill on a flight back to Moscow from Siberia on Thursday and was taken to the hospital in the city of Omsk after the plane made an emergency landing. His supporters believe that tea he drank was laced with poison — and that the Kremlin is behind both his illness and a delay in transferring him to Germany.
While his supporters and family members insist that Navalny was poisoned, doctors in Omsk denied that, saying that a metabolic disorder was the most likely diagnosis and that a drop in blood sugar may have caused Navalny to lose consciousness.
ASSOCIATED PRESS