Russia’s Alexei Navalny in Intensive Care after Suspected Poisoning

MOSCOW, KOMPAS.com – Fierce critic of the Russian government Alexei Navalny is in intensive care in a Siberian hospital after he was believed to have been poisoned.

News of Navalny’s suspected poisoning was shared by his spokesperson.

Alexei Navalny is a 44-year-old lawyer and anti-corruption campaigner who gained notoriety for his staunch opposition of President Vladimir Putin.

The Navalny poisoning incident caused the Russian government critic to lose consciousness on a Moscow-bound flight.

Read also: Expect Foreign Interference from Russia, China, and Iran in US Presidential Election

The plane made an emergency landing and Alexei is receiving treatment in a hospital in the city of Omsk.

His spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh wrote on Twitter that Navalny had been placed in a coma on a ventilator and that tests were being carried out.

"Alexei has toxic poisoning," she wrote. "Alexei is now in intensive care."

"I'm sure it was intentional poisoning," she told the Echo of Moscow radio station.

State news agency TASS reported that Navalny was in the intensive care unit for toxicology patients in Omsk Emergency Hospital No. 1.

"He is in a serious condition," the hospital's chief doctor Alexander Murakhovsky told TASS.

Yarmysh said police had been called to the hospital at their request.

"We think that Alexei was poisoned with something mixed in his tea. That was the only thing he drank in the morning," she wrote on Twitter.

The head of the legal department of the Anti-Corruption Foundation that Navalny heads, Vyacheslav Gimadi, wrote on Twitter that "there is no doubt that Navalny was poisoned for his political position and activity."

He said Navalny's lawyers were requesting an investigation into the attempted assassination of a public figure.