Alexei Navalny: Two hours that saved Russian opposition leader’s life

Russian opposition chief Alexei Navalny is in a coma in a Berlin hospital, and Germany has revealed he was poisoned by a Novichok nerve agent.

He was taken unwell on board a return flight from Siberia to Moscow and the airplane made an emergency landing in Omsk. Two days later Russian officers had been persuaded to let him be airlifted to Germany.

BBC Russian has pieced collectively the story of how flight attendants and medics fought to keep away from losing his life over the skies of Siberia. That’s the dramatic two-hour timeline of that perilous journey.

It was 20 August, and Alexei Navalny was taking an S7 airways flight from Tomsk to Moscow. He didn’t eat or drink one thing all morning – aside from a cup of tea he bought at Tomsk Bogashevo airport, in keeping with his press secretary Kira Yarmysh.

One different passenger on the flight, Ilya Ageev, seen Mr Navalny ingesting the tea about an hour sooner than the airplane was as a consequence of take off. The Kremlin critic was smiling and joking with fellow passengers who recognised him.

By the primary half hour of the flight, Mr Navalny started to essentially really feel unwell. Flight attendants had been handing water out to passengers, nevertheless he turned it down. He then acquired as a lot as go to the lavatory.

One different passenger tried to utilize the lavatory on the similar time, nevertheless Alexei Navalny was inside for about 20 minutes. A queue began to kind outside the door.

By now all four flight attendants on board had been acutely aware actually one in every of their passengers was unwell.

Minutes later, a flight attendant made an announcement asking if any docs had been on board. The other passengers now realised the situation was extreme.

The rest of the cabin crew educated the pilot and tried to handle first help to Mr Navalny.

His assistant, Ilya Pakhomov, walked down the aisle attention-grabbing for medical assist. A woman, who hasn’t been acknowledged, obtained right here forward to say she was a nurse.

For the next hour she and the flight attendants focused on preserving Mr Navalny acutely conscious until the pilot would possibly make an emergency landing, in keeping with S7 airways.

Sergey Nezhenets, a lawyer, was sitting inside the once more row close to the place Mr Navalny was being dealt with. He was as a consequence of change in Moscow sooner than flying on to Krasnodar in southern Russia.

“I started paying attention to what was occurring when a flight attendant requested for medical professionals on board to return forward,” Mr Nezhenets instructed the BBC.

“A few minutes later, the pilot launched we might be landing in Omsk, because of a passenger was unwell. I solely realised the passenger in question was Navalny after we landed, as soon as I checked Twitter and seen his spokeswoman’s posts.

“A few minutes after the call-out for a doctor, Alexei started moaning and screaming. He was clearly in ache. He was lying on the bottom inside the part of the airplane reserved for cabin crew. He wasn’t saying any phrases – he was merely screaming.”

That was when a nurse went forward to produce medical assist, he explains.

“I have no idea what they’d been doing, I didn’t see,” he says. “Nonetheless I heard them keep it up saying ‘Alexei, drink, drink, Alexei, breathe!’

“When he was moaning, the rest of us felt larger, in a fashion because of we’d inform he was on the very least nonetheless alive. I stress, at the moment I didn’t know it was Navalny.”

Two of Mr Navalny’s assistants had been standing shut by; one was his press secretary Kira Yarmysh.

“She was very nervous,” Mr Nezhenets says. “The medic requested her what had occurred to him, and Kira talked about: ‘I have no idea, he was most likely poisoned’.”

The crew moved fast to ask permission for an emergency landing at Omsk, the airline says, and it was given immediately.

It took little higher than 30 minutes for the airplane to land after passengers had been instructed there might be an emergency landing.

Nonetheless the cabin crew “saved checking the house home windows and complaining that, because of it was so cloudy, it was taking longer to land whereas Alexei was so unwell.”

The lawyer heard retching noises as they urged him to drink.

Omsk airport’s chief doctor, Vasily Sidorus, has refused to confirm or deny this. All he would say was “There was each half.”

Had they suspected meals poisoning, the crew might have tried to, says Israeli intensive care expert Mikhail Fremderman. “Nonetheless that may not have helped in a case of poisoning with organophosphorus compounds, which is what the Germans are literally talking about.”

And if Mr Navalny’s meals or drink had been poisoned, throwing him would have posed a hazard to those offering him medical assist, along with these cleaning up the airplane later.

At 09:01 Omsk time, the airplane landed.

Medical staff on the airport boarded the airplane merely two minutes after landing.

As shortly as that they’d examined Mr Navalny, the medics talked about “this is not a case for us – he desires intensive care”, Mr Nezhenets remembers.

He then heard one in every of many medical staff phoning for an ICU ambulance. They requested for it to drive straight on to the landing house, saying that the affected particular person was in a extreme state of affairs.

He then heard a medic explaining over the cellphone what coloration the airplane was and telling the driving power to park close to the steps.

“We waited for an extra 10 minutes for the ambulance to achieve,” he says. “All through this time, the docs took Navalny’s blood pressure and gave him an intravenous drip – nevertheless I really feel it was clear to them that it was of no use.”

Dr Sidorus says he did not cope with Alexei Navalny personally, nevertheless that his colleagues did their best to keep away from losing his life.

“It was exhausting to know what was occurring, as he could not talk,” he says. “They did each half they wanted to do, saved an individual’s life and made sure he was transferred to an relevant hospital.”

Passengers we spoke to think about the medics spent about 15 to 20 minutes analyzing Mr Navalny on board the airplane.

He was then taken off the airplane and his stretcher loaded into an ambulance, which straight to Omsk Emergency Hospital No 1.

The airplane was re-fuelled and, after one different half an hour, continued its journey to Moscow, Mr Nezhenets instructed the BBC.

“After we landed at Moscow Domodedovo airport, various policemen and plain-clothed males entered the airplane.

“They requested passengers seated inside the rows closest to the place Alexei had been sitting to stay, whereas the rest had been free to go. Alexei had been sitting someplace inside the centre of the airplane, row 10 or 11.”

It appeared uncommon to have police come on board. “At the moment, the case did not look jail. And however, proper right here was the protection service.”

For two days, the hospital in Omsk saved Mr Navalny in its acute poisoning division. Initially they’d not allow him to be flown to Germany, citing his unstable state of affairs.

Nonetheless, on 22 August, he was airlifted to the Charité clinic in Berlin and two days later German docs talked about their exams confirmed he had been poisoned.

Docs in Omsk, along with the chief doctor of the Emergency Hospital No 1 and the chief toxicologist, insisted that no poisonous substances had been detected in Mr Navalny’s physique when he was beneath their care. They talked about a metabolic dysfunction was one potential, totally different evaluation.

BBC Russian has requested Omsk nicely being authorities for a comment and an in depth account of Navalny’s hospital hold, nevertheless has not obtained a reply.

Reporting by Anna Pushkarskaya, Elena Berdnikova, Timur Sazonov, Andrei Soshnikov and Ksenia Churmanova.