Navalny’s wife appeals to Putin for permission to take him to Germany for treatment

Yulia Navalnaya, the wife of prominent opposition politician Alexey Navalny, has written an appeal to Russian President Vladimir Putin seeking permission to transport her husband to Germany for medical treatment.

Navalny is in intensive care at a hospital in the Siberian city of Omsk, where he was brought on Thursday August 20, after becoming violently ill while on a plane. He later fell into a coma and remains in serious condition.

On the morning of August 21, Alexey Navalny’s aides announced that doctors had prohibited his medical evacuation after declaring his condition unstable. This decision was made shortly before an air ambulance landed in Omsk, which planned to fly Navalny to a top clinic in Berlin. Navalny’s wife, Yulia, says she believes the doctors in Omsk are trying to prevent independent specialists from discovering the substance supposedly used to poison her husband.

• Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the Kremlin had yet to receive any appeals from Navalny’s representatives about transporting him to Germany. Asked about whether or not the authorities had intervened to prevent Navalny’s evacuation abroad, Peskov said: “This is the decision of the attending physician.”