Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny who is believed to have been poisoned has been driven out of hospital be flown out of Russia to Germany for specialist treatment.
A video at the hospital in Omsk showed an ambulance with its rear doors opened as the unconscious Navalny was loaded in by medics wearing masks.
More footage showed the ambulance entering Omsk airport ahead of a five and half hour flight to Berlin.
A private air ambulance chartered by German NGO Cinema for Peace was flying him to Berlin’s Charite hospital for treatment.
Navalny’s family were told they must take responsibility for any consequences of moving the gravely-ill anti-corruption campaigner to Germany.
Earlier today his wife begged President Vladimir Putin to release her comatose husband amid claims of a cover-up by Russian doctors who claimed he has a heart disease.
Navalny’s wife Yulia, begged arch-rival Vladimir Putin to allow him to leave the country for treatment after he fell into a coma amid suspicion he was poisoned with a cup of tea.
Yulia, who has been barred from seeing her husband since he fell unconscious on a flight from Siberia to Moscow yesterday, said it is vital he is taken to Germany for specialist treatment.
This afternoon, doctors at the Siberian hospital where Navalny is being treated, permitted his transportation to a top German medical facility.
A medical plane chartered from Berlin by Navalny’s allies arrived in Omsk, the Siberian city where he is being treated, on Friday – but Russian doctors had initially denied them permission to move him, saying his condition is too unstable.
German medics were briefly allowed to see the 44-year-old and ruled he was fit to fly, Navalny’s press secretary said, before they were marched into a nearby car and kicked out of the hospital.
Alexander Murakhovsky, the hospital’s head doctor, has flatly denied claims that Navalny was poisoned – saying he is suffering from a heart condition caused by low blood sugar.
He also said that ‘industrial chemicals’ were found on his hands and clothes, but did not say what they were.
Medics at the hospital insist they are more than capable of treating the condition, even as pictures laid bare the grim interior of the Soviet-era building.
Medical specialists carry Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny on a stretcher into an ambulance on their way to an airport before his medical evacuation to Germany in Omsk, Russia
An ambulance carrying Alexei Navalny enters Omsk airport in Russia in the early hours of Saturday after he was suspected to have been poisoned
Yulia Navalny, wife of Russian opposition leader Alexei, has begged arch-rival Vladimir Putin to allow her husband to be taken out of the country for treatment after he fell into a coma amid suspicion he was poisoned with toxins mixed into his tea
Doctors at the hospital where Putin critic Alexei Navalny is being treated say that no trace of poison has been found in his body – though a chemical was found on his clothes and hands
Alexei Navalny remain in a coma in a Russian hospital after allies say he was poisoned with a ‘deadly’ substance that was slipped into his cup of tea (pictured drinking it)
Yulia, in a letter to Putin, said it is vital her husband is flown out of the country to be treated by specialists – as pictures revealed the filthy interior of the hospital where he is being treated
Navalny was taken to Ormsk hospital, in Siberia, yesterday after he fell unconscious on a flight. Since then the hospital has been flooded by security guards and Russian police (pictured)
Medics at the hospital, who insist Navalny was not poisoned and is suffering a metabolic condition caused by low blood sugar, insist they are more than capable of treating his condition – even as pictures revealed the grim conditions (left and right)
Images showed paint peeling from the walls, signs of water damage, rusted sinks and doors, an unclean toilet and parts of the building covered in plywood.
Another image showed two Russian security personnel in suits marching down a dimly-lit corridor towards a masked doctor coming in the opposite direction.
Yulia, Navalny’s wife, accused the Kremlin of forcing doctors to delay the evacuation until all traces of poison have disappeared from her husband’s body, making it impossible to prove that he was attacked.
The Kremlin has denied involvement, insisting that the decision to keep Navalny in Russia was a ‘purely a medical decision’.
Kira Yarmysh, his press secretary, said doctors and the Kremlin had both agreed to the move but at 9.45am – 15 minutes before the evacuation plane arrived – medics suddenly changed their minds.
‘Until now, doctors have said that they are ready to authorize transportation,’ she tweeted early Friday. ‘That is why we organized it in the shortest possible time.
An air ambulance was chartered from Germany to Ormsk on Friday to take Navalny to Berlin for treatment, but doctors denied permission for him to travel at the last moment
Ivan Zhadnov, director of Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, said anyone coming into contact with him is being told to wear a hazmat suit due to ‘deadly dangerous’ substance
Kira Yarmysh, Navalny’s spokeswoman, (pictured outside hospital today) accused the Kremlin of making a second attempt on his life after refusing to let him leave the country
‘Now, at the last moment, doctors are not giving permission. This decision, of course, was not made by them, but by the Kremlin.’
Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said German doctors who arrived on Friday had been invited to join Russian doctors treating Navalny.
Speaking on a conference call, Peskov said it was still unclear what caused Navalny to fall ill while flying back to Moscow from Siberia on Thursday morning.
Medics later suggested that Navalny’s blood pressure was low, and that traces of chemicals had been found on his fingers and clothes – without saying what chemicals they were.
Navalny, an anti-corruption campaigner and Putin’s most threatening political rival, became gravely ill after falling suddenly sick on a plane from Tomsk to Moscow.
His aides and family believe his tea was spiked with an unidentified ‘toxic poison’ at Tomsk airport before his flight.
The aircraft made an emergency landing in Omsk and he was rushed to hospital.
Hospital chiefs today indicated his condition was too grave to be moved either to another Russian hospital or – as his family and aides wish – onto an air ambulance due to arrive from Germany.
His press secretary Kira Yarmysh said: ‘The ban on transporting Alexei means a direct threat to his life.
‘It is deadly to remain in the Omsk hospital without equipment and without a diagnosis in the current situation.’
She said Putin’s deputy chief of staff and spokesman Dmitry Peskov had promised to allow Navalny to be moved if needed.
‘Yesterday Peskov promised to provide help in treating Navalny and in transporting him to a different clinic.
‘Today doctors are refusing to give permission for his transportation.’
She warned: ‘Navalny’s life now depends on the fact that the chief physician of the intensive care unit has refused to ‘bear responsibility’ – by allowing him to be moved, ideally abroad, in a well equipped flying intensive care unit.’
Navalny fell sick on a plane which was forced to make an emergency landing as fellow passengers heard him screaming in pain, before he was taken unconscious into an ambulance
Police officers detain a protester as he comes to support Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny in front of the building of the Federal Security Service in Moscow
A protester stands in front of a police officer holding a poster reading ‘Putin stop poisoning people!’ during a picket in support of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny
Anatoly Kalinichenko, deputy chief doctor of the hospital, speaks to members of the media who have been camped out there for two days awaiting news of Putin’s rival
Yulia Navalny, the campaigner’s wife and mother of his two children, added that she believes the delay in transport is to allow the toxin to reduce to levels that would be undetectable after he is moved.
That means his supporters will never be able to confirm that he was poisoned, or what he was poisoned with.
Zhdanov added: ‘All relevant documents have been submitted.
‘There was an application from a family member, consent from a clinic in Germany and documents for transportation (by air ambulance).
‘The clinic’s decision is inexplicable and monstrous.’
He said: ‘The doctors have now locked themselves up in the chief doctor’s office.
‘No-one is allowed to see them.’
Navalny’s camp say they are not being given proper details of his condition and have demanded he is allowed onto the air ambulance and flown to Berlin.
The chief doctor in Omsk, Alexander Murakovsky, denied any knowledge of a poison in Navalny’s body, saying tests are underway and will take two more days.
‘We cannot allow for the patient to be transported even under the responsibility of relatives unless the patient’s clinical condition is stable,’ he said.
‘His current state causes our concern in relation to transportation.’
If he was moved ‘anything can happen including the saddest thing possible’.
Navalny’s doctor Anastasia Vasilyeva, who has been forbidden from seeing him, is seen outside the hospital in Ormsk where he is being treated
Navalny has been campaigning against corruption at Russian state-owned companies since 2008, and vowed to oppose Putin at the 2018 election but was banned from running
Omsk transport police spokeswoman Yulia Shwartz refused to confirm a deadly substance had been found.
‘The analysis is still ongoing and so far we do not have any results.’
Russia has dispatched intensive care specialists, neurophysiologists and anaesthetists were sent to Omsk from two top Moscow clinics, the Pirogov Medical and Surgical Centre and the Burdenko Centre of Neurosurgery.
Navalny’s wife Yulia flew yesterday to be at his hospital amid claims that relatives were not being given the full facts of his condition.
German chancellor Angela Merkel offered treatment in Germany for the Putin foe.
‘I hope that he can recover and… he can receive from us all the help and medical support needed,’ she said.
Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov wished Navalny a ‘speedy recovery’ and said the Kremlin. Would help secure him treatment abroad if needed.
He claimed the poisoning allegations were ‘only assumptions’ until tests proved otherwise.
Political analyst Tatiana Stanovaya said Navalny had ‘hundreds of enemies including some hardened individuals’, pointing to his anti-corruption investigations that attract millions of views online.
THE THORN IN PUTIN’S SIDE: WHO IS ALEXEI NAVALNY?
Born in 1976 to mother and father who owned a basket-weaving factory south of Moscow, Alexei Navalny spent his childhood between Russia and Ukraine, where his father’s family live.
He graduated with a law degree from the Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia in 1998, and then went on to study finance.
While politically active in opposition circles from 2000, Navalny first first rose to prominence in 2008 when he purchased stocks in major state-owned Russian companies, and began asking awkward questions at board meetings about their finances.
He also began blogging about alleged corruption within the firms, and linking it back to officials in Vladimir Putin’s government.
In 2010 he was awarded a scholarship to the World Fellows Program at Yale University, and spent a semester in the US.
Returning to Russia in 2011, he urged followers of his blog and social media to vote against Putin’s United Russia party in parliamentary elections.
The party won, but with a much-reduced majority and the victory was tarnished by allegations of vote-rigging and anti-corruption protests.
Navalny went on to lead mass demonstrations against Putin in the lead-up to the 2012 presidential elections, and was jailed several times in the process.
Putin easily won the election, and shortly afterwards Russia’s Investigative Committee launched a probe into Navalny.
In 2013 he was charged with embezzlement, convicted, and sentenced to five years in jail – a punishment he condemned as political.
To the surprise of many, he was released on bail so that he could run in the Moscow mayoral elections against Putin ally Sergey Sobyanin as head of the newly-formed Progress Party.
Navalny is pictured in Tomsk with his supporters, shortly before he fell ill
Navalny lost the vote, garnering 27 per cent of ballots, but this was seen as an unexpected success since he was effectively banned from appearing on TV.
The following year Navalny was placed under house arrest, before his embezzlement convictions were overturned by Russia’s Supreme Court following a similar ruling by the EU.
In 2016, he announced his intention to run against Putin in the 2018 election, prompting Russia’s state prosecutors to re-try him on the corruption charges.
He was subsequently convicted, meaning he was automatically barred from running in the election.
In 2017 he was left partially blind in one eye after attackers threw green dye used as a disinfectant at his face outside his office.
In August last year he suffered rashes and his face became swollen while he was in a police detention centre serving a short term for calling for illegal protests.
He was taken to hospital where doctors said he had suffered an allergic reaction but Navalny asked for an investigation into poisoning.