Alexei Navalny Poisoned

[AGBF]

Vladimir Putin's sole, remaining, political opponent was poisoned several days ago and is in a coma. He is the man you have read about leading crowds of supporters and trying to get on the ballot against Putin. He has had poison dye, that destroyed the eyesight in one of his eyes thrown at him before.I just wanted everyone to be aware of who got poisoned. We hear of poisonings by Putin and sometimes do not even know who the victims are. People may remember a brazen attack in England, however.

"(Navalny) was one of Putin's most high profile critics - being described as the man Vlad 'fears most' by the Wall Street Journal in 2012.
Navalny's mysterious 'illness' follows on from poisoning of MI6 double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury on March 3, 2018.
The duo were left fighting for their lives after the nerve agent Novichok was daubed on the doorknob of his home.
The attack also poisoned hero cop Sgt Nick Bailey, and locals Charlie Rowley and Dawn Sturgess - with the mum-of-three dying from exposure to the toxin".

Opinion | Why Would Vladimir Putin Want to Get Rid of Aleksei Navalny Now? (Published 2020)

The unchanging leader of the regime is Mr. Putin; the unchanging leader of the opposition is Mr. Navalny. But everything changes.

www.nytimes.com

Why Putin loves using ‘viciously theatrical’ poison on enemies

POISON is a weapon which may feel more at home in the Middle Ages – yet it appears to be the method of choice for Russian president Vladimir Putin. Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is…

www.thesun.co.uk

 

[Demon]

I'm sure it was just a horrible accident. People opposed to Putin have never been poisoned before. Never. But what does this make now? At least 3 or 4 horrible accidents for Putin opponents?

 

[Begonia]

Chilling.

 

[Matata]

A little ricin in his tea ala Walter White

 

[missy]

Putin is a monster.
Makes Trump look almost good by comparison. Almost.

 

[Demon]

Putin is a monster.
Makes Trump look almost good by comparison. Almost.

Lol. It's pretty sad that it takes comparison to look to a murderous thug to make Trump look almost good.

 

[AGBF]

Public pressure may be causing Putin to allow the comatose Navalny to be released to Germany. His wife was not allowed to talk to the press.

MOSCOW — "Gravely ill Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny was cleared Friday for transfer to a hospital in Berlin, ending a standoff between doctors and Navalny allies who accuse Russian officials of attempting to cover up a suspected poisoning of the country's most prominent opposition leader.

The decision to allow Navalny to leave a Siberian hospital followed conflicting accounts on his condition and whether the comatose Navalny could be taken aboard a German plane waiting at the Omsk airport.

Alexander Murakhovsky, chief physician at Omsk Emergency Hospital No. 1, said Friday that Navalny could be transferred to German care. Earlier in the day, he said the 44-year-old Navalny was not well enough to be moved.

Murakhovsky added that there was no indication Navalny was poisoned, though he earlier said it would take two days for test results.


The confusion added to the many questions since Navalny fell into a coma Thursday after he became suddenly ill on a flight en route to Moscow from Siberia. His spokeswoman and others quickly claimed that Navalny was the latest victim of a poisoning ordered by the state, a method used before in attacks linked to Russian agents.

Doctors treating Navalny said his condition had improved but gave few other details"

.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/navalny-poisoning-russia-hospital-vladimir-putin/2020/08/21/0a9ca518-e30d-11ea-82d8-5e55d47e90ca_story.html?hpid=hp_world1-8-12_navalnydoctors-307am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory-ans

 

[ItsMainelyYou]

I'm glad he's going Germany, I hope he pulls through. Again.
The Russian people need him. I admire his bravery.

 

[Demon]

I'm actually shocked he's getting flown to Germany, but glad of it!

 

[Begonia]

He's probably stabilized but likely brain dead, which is why he's being released. They arent worried about him any longer. Hope I'm wrong.

 

[MaisOuiMadame]

He's going to the Charité Hospital in Berlin, because they have treated Pussy Riot activist Pjotr Wersilow after a similar poison attack in 2018.

German doctors have arrived in Siberia with their own hospital plane this Friday morning.

German media say Russian officials seem to try and prolong the OK for the transport - supposedly to gain time to have any poison degrade so that the German authorities won't be able to detect anything anymore.

 

[Demon]

He's probably stabilized but likely brain dead, which is why he's being released. They arent worried about him any longer. Hope I'm wrong.

I hope you're wrong too!

 

[doberman]

And this is who our fearless leader sucks up to.

 

[Polabowla]

This is so scary.

 

[AGBF]

Just an update, no startling news. The article says that Alexei Navalny arrived in Berlin, is still in a coma, but survived the flight and is stable. Maybe kipari will have access to more news being in Europe and being able to hear both French and German reports (as well as English).


"Russian dissident Alexei Navalny, who is in a coma after a suspected poisoning, arrived in Berlin on a special flight Saturday for treatment by specialists at the German capital's main hospital.


'Navalny is in Berlin,' Jaka Bizilj, of the German organization that organized the flight, told The Associated Press. 'He survived the flight and he's stable.'

After touching down shortly before 9 a.m. in an area of the capital's Tegel airport used for government and military flights, Navalny was taken by ambulance to the downtown campus of Berlin's Charite hospital.

The hospital later said extensive tests were being carried out, and doctors would not comment on his illness or treatment until those were completed."

 

[Arcadian]

Its either a poisening or somehow falling out a window. wtf....

 

[MaisOuiMadame]

Unfortunately, no more details than in your article, @AGBF. What does give me hope is that -even when they couldn't determine the method/poison used - Piotr Wersilow was released after two weeks of treatment at the Charité.

He was the one who asked "Cinema for Peace " - activist Jaka Bizilj to organize the transport.



Like Anna Politkowskaja and Alexander Litwinenko he seems to have had a cup of tea, right before he had horrible symptoms...

And the Russian Federal Security Service is said to have had agents in the hospital in Omsk, denying anyone to see Navalny.... His wife as well as the German medical team.

As soon s the Charité releases a statement I'll try to update!!
I sure hope he'll recover as well as Wersilow...

 

[AGBF]

Some of the information below has already been posted, but some of it is new. I am posting it to flesh out the story of what happened to Mr Navalny as more of the story comes to light.

© Provided by The Guardian Photograph: Michael Kappeler/AP

"A Russian newspaper has alleged there was extensive government surveillance of the Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny during a trip to Siberia before he collapsed from a suspected poisoning on Thursday.


Navalny’s press secretary, Kira 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 on Thursday. He was transferred to Berlin’s Charite hospital on Saturday for treatment.


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. It happens all the time when Alexey goes to the regions on a business trip. So the detail doesn’t surprise us at all. '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 supermarket.'

© Photograph: Michael Kappeler/AP Alexei Navalny, in an isolation pod, being lifted out of an air ambulance in Berlin.

Navalny, who fell into a coma after drinking what supporters suspect was poisoned tea, arrived at Berlin’s Tegel airport early on Saturday and was admitted to the Charité university hospital for preliminary tests and treatment.


Jaka Bizilj, an activist whose NGO Cinema for Peace organised the flight to Berlin, told reporters outsidethe hospital that Navalny’s condition was 'very worrying'. The hospital said: 'Extensive medical diagnostics are currently in progress. The examinations will take some time.'


The flight followed a 12-hour standoff at a hospital in the Siberian city of Omsk as doctors refused to release Navalny for a transfer abroad, 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.'


A photograph published by Yarmysh appeared to show Navalny being loaded into the air ambulance in an isolation pod. Ellen Cathrine Andersen, the CEO of Epiguard, the manufacturer, said the pods 'protect the healthcare professionals or the air crew from infectious patients or, in this case, those with suspicion of poisoning.'


On Friday the director of Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, Ivan Zhdanov, said a police official had told him they had found a 'deadly substance', but refused to divulge which one, citing the ongoing investigation.


'This substance presents a risk to the life of not just Alexei but those around him too,' Zhdanov claimed the police official had said. 'Everyone around him should be wearing protective equipment.' Doctors later denied they had found any toxic chemicals.


The Berlin hospital previously treated another Russian dissident, Pyotr Verzilov, for a suspected poisoning in 2018. In an interview, Verzilov told the Guardian that Navalny’s symptoms appeared to be 'quite similar to my own', including sudden sweating, a loss of coordination and eventual loss of consciousness.


Navalny fell ill on Thursday after boarding a flight in Tomsk where he had been meeting activists and volunteers ahead of local elections next month. Shortly after takeoff, Yarmysh said, he began sweating, had difficulty concentrating, and then lost consciousness.


'He started feeling really sick. They struggled to bring him round and he was screaming,' said Pavel Lebedev, another passenger. He posted a video showing medical staff rushing to the back of the plane as a male passenger howled in pain.


The pilots made an emergency landing. 'The very clear message from the doctors that if there had not been an emergency landing in Omsk, he would have died,' the activist Bizilj said, according to Reuters."

Police sources say Alexei Navalny was under surveillance in Siberia

 

[AGBF]

This article, although only scratching the surface of Russian politics, attempts to address why Mr. Navalny might have been attacked now and what the consequences of his attack could be. He has long been a thorn in Mr. Putin's side. Why the attack now?

"BERLIN — Russia’s most prominent opposition figure, Aleksei A. Navalny, arrived in Berlin for treatment on Saturday after falling into a coma in Siberia in what his family and supporters suspect was a deliberate poisoning weeks before nationwide local elections.

...​

The sudden illness struck Mr. Navalny, the most persistent critic of President Vladimir V. Putin, just as popular uprisings have sprung up in Russia’s Far East and in neighboring Belarus — and only weeks before Russians vote in municipal elections on Sept. 13.

How it will affect the political scene, analysts in Russia said, will hinge in part on Mr. Navalny’s longer-term condition and whether he will be able to return home.

'Sometimes, instances that are publicly perceived as political terror do demoralize the opposition,' Ekaterina Schulmann, a Moscow-based political analyst, said in an interview, 'and at other times they motivate people to protest, or at the least, to vote in protest.'

If Mr. Navalny remains in Germany for a lengthy recovery, or indefinitely as a political exile, the Kremlin stands to benefit politically, she said.
'It is very useful to have an opposition figure in exile,' Ms. Schulmann said. 'He can be cast in the state media as a person who fled Russia. They can present it as unpatriotic behavior.'

In the days before he fell ill, Mr. Navalny had been meeting with opposition candidates in Novosibirsk, Siberia’s largest city, promoting a strategy he called 'smart voting' that encourages multiple, small opposition movements to back a single candidate on a local ballot.


The strategy seeks to chip away at the dominance of the pro-government party, United Russia, in city councils and regional parliaments.

Mr. Putin’s popularity has been in decline for the past two years as nationalist fervor over the annexation of Crimea from Ukraine has faded and the economy has slumped under sanctions and then coronavirus lockdowns."

Navalny, Being Treated in Germany, Looms Over Russian Politics (Published 2020)

His sudden, unexplained illness comes amid political uprisings in Russia’s Far East, and just weeks before municipal elections take place across the country.

www.nytimes.com

 

[MaisOuiMadame]

German medical team say they are confident Navalny was poisoned by cholinesterase inhibitors....

His health situation was described as serious, but not life threatening.

 

[redwood66]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1298304977996308484

 

[Musia]

6 days ago, on Aug. 19th. Beautiful young people! https://www.facebook.com/navalny/photos/pcb.3554786634540394/3554786527873738/?type=3&theater

Same happy picture on Instagram, the last he posted

View this content on Instagram

View this content on Instagram

 

[AGBF]

Very nice photo, Musia. I cannot read the Cyrillic alphabet, so I do not even know if the captions are in Russian or Ukrainian. I believe that you use the Cyrillic alphabet for Ukrainian, no?

 

[AGBF]

I continue to look for updates on Alexei Navalny's health. Instead I seem to be finding more information on poisons that the Russians have been using. Below are excerpts from an article in today's edition of "The Washington Post".


"When Soviet scientists developed a new group of nerve agent in the 1970s and 80s, they called it Novichok, or 'newcomer.' The lethal cocktail acts as a cholinesterase inhibitor, blocking an enzyme the nervous system needs to function. The poison disrupts communication between nerves and muscles.

The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons added Novichock to a list of banned chemical toxins in 2019 after Britain accused Russian agents of using it to poison a former Russian operative and his daughter two years earlier. The Kremlin denied the allegations.
Berlin’s Charité hospital on Monday said that another Russian dissident, prominent opposition figure Alexei Navalny, was poisoned last week when he suddenly fell violently ill after sipping a cup of tea in a Siberian airport. While German investigators have not yet identified the exact substance, they believe it was also a cholinesterase inhibitor based on results from several independent laboratories.

...​

Cholinesterase inhibitors, also called anticholinesterases, are a compound of chemicals for which scientists have found many uses, from chemical weapons to pesticides to Alzheimer’s medicines, according to Reuters. Improperly inhaling, ingesting or coming into eye or skin contact with the chemicals can be dangerous. Carbamates and organophosphates, both pesticides, use cholinesterase inhibitors to neutralize the nervous system of insects. They can also be harmful to humans if ingested.

Novichok and Sarin are among a subgroup known as nerve agents. They are many times more potent than the pesticides. Sarin was on the original 1997 list of toxins banned by the OPCW, a global chemical weapons watchdog.


Cholinesterase is an enzyme the nervous system needs to regulate the body’s basic function, including the heart and lungs. Patients poisoned with chemicals that block the enzyme can experience multi-system flare-ups, seizures, paralysis and sometimes death, usually from respiratory failure.

For example, the highly volatile agent Sarin, which Syrian President Bashar al-Assad used in multiple deadly chemical weapons attacks against Syrians in the spring of 2017, is a colorless, odorless and tasteless liquid that can spread through fluids including water or through the air as a gas, according to the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Once ingested, the chemical disrupts the function of glands and muscles. That can lead to symptoms including a runny nose, headache, blurred vision and trouble breathing. But heavier exposure, which can be fatal, means loss of consciousness, paralysis, convulsions and respiratory failure.

Novichok is potent in part because it can work fast, sometimes within 30 seconds depending on the dose, and can be inhaled, ingested or absorbed through the skin, according to the BBC. Those who may have been exposed should change their clothes and wash their skin, according to experts.

Nerve agents can be hard to detect.


A 'broad analysis has been initiated' to determine the substance with which Navalny was poisoned, Berlin’s Charité hospital in a statement on Monday. But doctors said they had confirmed through tests that a toxic chemical blocking cholinesterase was the cause of Navalny’s illness.

Doctors are providing Navalny atropine, a medicine used to treat some forms of nerve agent and pesticide poisonings. Athene is another nerve agent antidote that can help counteract the poison, but is not a cure.

Navalny is in a medically induced coma, although 'there is no acute danger to his life,' the hospital said. 'Longer-term effects, especially in the area of the nervous system, cannot be ruled out.'

Navalny’s spokesperson accused Russian authorities of deliberately poisoning him, charges the Kremlin denies. But well-known critics of Putin have been targeted in a sequence of poisonings, confirmed and alleged.


In 2017, former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter were hospitalized after being poisoned with Novichok in their home in Salisbury, England. They survived, but a man unconnected to their pair who came in contact with the chemical died. The United Kingdom blamed Russia for the attack. The Kremlin denied responsibility.

Pyotr Verzilov, a member of the Pussy Riot protest group, sought medical care in Germany in 2018 after he became ill from a suspected poisoning. He blamed it on Russian military intelligence. Doctors in Berlin found no traces of poison in his system, though they said they could also identify no other possible explanation for his symptoms.

'My symptoms in the first hours of poisoning were VERY similar to what is happening with Navalny now,' Verzilov wrote on Twitter on Thursday as the Navalny news broke".

 

[MaisOuiMadame]

They haven't given any update on his health, other than " Induced Coma", "serious, but not life threatening".

The Russians are now implying the German doctors are falsely stating it's poising to accuse Russia on behalf of the German government...

It's so funny how accusations tell you so much about the accuser, like in this case when a totalitarian regime has NO grasp of a democratic system, how it works and the amount of freedom and protection the medical staff have. It would be funny if there wasn't that poor man fighting for his health in a hospital bed in a foreign country because a dictator cannot handle criticism...

 

[AGBF]

This is a wonderful article by Nadya Tolokonnikova a founding member of Pussy Riot. It reads like a story.

Opinion | I’m an Activist in Russia. I Can’t Believe What My Life Has Become. (Published 2020)

As a founding member of the activist band Pussy Riot, I’ve fought for years against autocracy. My country has only slid deeper.

www.nytimes.com

 

[Musia]

Very nice photo, Musia. I cannot read the Cyrillic alphabet, so I do not even know if the captions are in Russian or Ukrainian. I believe that you use the Cyrillic alphabet for Ukrainian, no?

Yes, we use Cyrillic alphabet too, but it is not 100% identical to the Russian one. I checked all Navalny's sites, can't find any updates in Russian. The last information is dated Aug. 24.

 

[AGBF]

@kipari-

Great news! There was no crime committed against Alexei Navalny. I knew you would be pleased to hear the news, so I am posting the information, which was just published by Reuters.

"MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Russian Prosecutor General’s office said on Thursday there was no indication a crime had been committed against Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, who is in a medically-induced coma in a Berlin hospital after what allies say was a poisoning.


The office added it saw no basis to open a criminal investigation following Navalny’s hospitalization in Russia last week.


Navalny, 44, was airlifted to Germany on Saturday after collapsing during a flight from the Siberian city of Tomsk to Moscow.

The German hospital treating him said its initial medical examination pointed to poisoning, though Russian doctors who had treated Navalny in a Siberian hospital have contradicted that diagnosis.

German authorities have agreed to cooperate with Russia on the case, the Prosecutor General’s office added in a statement".

Deb/AGBF

 

[MaisOuiMadame]

@kipari-

Great news! There was no crime committed against Alexei Navalny. I knew you would be pleased to hear the news, so I am posting the information, which was just published by Reuters.

"MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Russian Prosecutor General’s office said on Thursday there was no indication a crime had been committed against Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, who is in a medically-induced coma in a Berlin hospital after what allies say was a poisoning.


The office added it saw no basis to open a criminal investigation following Navalny’s hospitalization in Russia last week.


Navalny, 44, was airlifted to Germany on Saturday after collapsing during a flight from the Siberian city of Tomsk to Moscow.

The German hospital treating him said its initial medical examination pointed to poisoning, though Russian doctors who had treated Navalny in a Siberian hospital have contradicted that diagnosis.

German authorities have agreed to cooperate with Russia on the case, the Prosecutor General’s office added in a statement".

Deb/AGBF

Thanks for the laugh, @AGBF !!

 

[Matata]

Clouds cannot cover secret places, nor denials conceal truth.

Demosthenes