German doctors have deemed Navalny fit for transport abroad for treatment, his spokeswoman says

After examining Alexey Navalny, a team of intensive care doctors from Germany have concluded that he can be transported, the opposition politician’s spokeswoman, Kira Yarmysh, wrote on Twitter. 

Navalny is in intensive care at a hospital in the Siberian city of Omsk, where he was brought on August 20, after becoming violently ill while on a plane. Navalny is currently in a coma and, according to local doctors, in serious but stable condition.

According to Yarmysh, the German doctors said that the air ambulance that landed in Omsk this morning, planning to fly Navalny to a top clinic in Berlin, is equipped to transport him “safely and immediately.”

Yarmysh also added that the Omsk hospital’s chief physician had previously made false claims to the press about the decision to keep Navalny in intensive care in Omsk being made “in consultation with the German doctors.”

On the morning of August 21, Alexey Navalny’s aides announced that doctors prohibited his medical evacuation after declaring his condition unstable and “unevacuable.” Navalny’s wife, Yulia Navalnaya, says she believes the doctors in Omsk are trying to prevent independent specialists from discovering the substance supposedly used to poison her husband. Navalnaya has since sent an appeal to Russian President Vladimir Putin seeking permission to transport her husband to Germany for medical treatment. 

A source familiar with Navalny’s medical examinations told Meduza that there were no traces of toxic substances in his bloodstream. Citing an unnamed doctor, Ria Novosti also reported that the results of Navalny’s blood work and urine analysis didn’t reveal any poisons.