A plane carrying Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny who is in a coma after a suspected poisoning left for a German hospital on Saturday.
Images taken from the tarmac of an airport in the Siberian city of Omsk show Navalny being lifted into a private air ambulance – which was chartered to to fly him to Berlin’s Charite hospital for treatment.
The flight could then be seen taking off just after 8am local time and was expected to take about five hours.
Navalny’s personal doctor Anastasia Vasilyeva this morning confirmed that he had been put into an ‘artificial’ coma in a bid to stop his ‘very deep convulsions.
She believes a ‘poison or some toxic agent’ must have caused Navalny’s extreme condition and said a ‘metabolic changes’ – the cause cited by Russian doctors – could not have lead to his brain damage.
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.
The private air ambulance was chartered by German NGO Cinema for Peace.
Navalny, a 44-year-old politician and corruption investigator who is one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest critics, was admitted to an intensive care unit in Omsk on Thursday.
His supporters believe that tea he drank was laced with poison – and that the Kremlin is behind both his illness and the delay in transferring him to a top German hospital.
Dr Vasilyeva said she went to the hospital in Siberia but was barred from visiting him.
She told Radio 4’s Today Programme: ‘They didn’t allow nobody except Yulia, his wife, and his brother to come to him and visit him. So that’s why I didn’t see him but I spoke to his doctors and at least they described the whole clinical picture and I understood all about his health, about his condition now and it’s not very good news.
She added: ‘So he’s in a coma. He’s in coma number two and some toxic agent, some toxic substance, that I think […] only some poison or some toxic agent can influence in such a way that it damages the brain.’
She said he suffers from a ‘convulsive syndrome’ and his coma is ‘artificial’ to prevent ‘very deep convulsions’.
She went on: ‘What can lead to this condition? Only some toxic substance. Russian doctors didn’t say anything about it. They said it is only metabolic changes and carbohydrate changes. But all doctors can understand that no damage and changes of the metabolic system can lead to damage of the brain.’
She hopes that German doctors will be able to help Navalny. She said: ‘If he was in Germany at the moment of his case, maybe they can manage to understand quickly what the substance is. But now they can treat on his symptoms and his disease.’
When German specialists first arrived on a plane equipped with advanced medical equipment Friday morning at his family’s behest, Navalny’s physicians in Omsk said he was too unstable to move.
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)
Navalny’s supporters denounced that as a ploy by authorities to stall until any poison in his system would no longer be traceable.