German doctors gain access in Siberia to dissident in coma

MOSCOW (AP) — The family and allies of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who has been in a coma for more than a day, were fighting Friday to get him flown to a top German medical facility from a Siberian hospital, but local doctors refused to authorize the transfer. After much wrangling, German physicians were allowed to see him, an associate said.

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 the Siberian city of Omsk on Thursday, following a suspected poisoning that his supporters believe was engineered by the Kremlin.

A plane with German specialists and equipment necessary to transfer Navalny landed at Omsk airport on Friday morning, prepared to take the politician to a top clinic in Berlin. But doctors at the Siberian hospital said his condition was too unstable to transport him.

Navalny’s supporters denounced the medical verdict as a ploy by the authorities to stall until any poison would no longer be traceable in his system. But a senior doctor in Omsk said no poison had been so far found in Navalny’s body.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he wasn’t aware of any instructions to stop the transfer and that it was purely a medical decision.

“It may pose a threat to his health,” Peskov said.

Leonid Volkov, a close associate of Navalny, said Friday that German doctors now have access to him after they were initially not allowed to see him.

Volkov said even though that was good news, Navalny’s family and allies still lacked any reliable “independent data” on his condition and were standing by their demand that he needs to be brought to Germany.

“We are still very far away from having this situation resolved,”...