Omsk
Sergei Maximishin, the deputy chief physician at the clinic in Omsk, Siberia, has died "suddenly" at the age of 55. The hospital's administration said so "with regret" in an official statement, U.S. broadcaster CNN reported. No details were given on the cause of death.
The hospital treated Alexei Navalny last summer immediately after he was poisoned. The Kremlin critic had collapsed on a flight from Tomsk, Siberia, to Moscow in late August. Initially, he was then treated at the hospital in Omsk after an emergency landing of the plane. Two days later, still in a coma, he was taken to Berlin's Charité University Hospital for treatment.
Alexey Navalny, the Russian opposition leader and Vladimir Putin critic, has arrived Saturday in the Charite hospital in Berlin, after a evacuation flight from Omsk.
The hospital confirmed Navalny was admitted and that an "extensive medical diagnosis" is being carried out.
Jaka Bizilj, founder of the German NGO Cinemas for Peace, said to reporters: "The good news is that he's stable, so the whole travel did not affect him," Bizilj said. "But there is no reason to celebrate, because he is in a very critical condition. So the real work starts now with the doctors at the Charite."
Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny, who fell seriously ill on Thursday and has been in a coma in Omsk since then, has been flown to Germany. The permission had been announced by a doctor at the hospital treating him on Friday. Earlier, doctors in Omsk, Siberia, had declared that the 44-year-old was not fit for transport.
He will now treated in the university clinic Charité.
The German chancellor Angela Merkel has offered to treat Nawalny in a German hospital. According to his spokeswoman, he has been poisoned. Activists now want to have him flown out to Berlin for treatment as he is currently in a coma.
The Charité in Berlin has promised to treat Nawalny, and currently, the necessary flight permits are still being obtained. Nawalny is to be brought from Omsk, where he is in hospital, by a plane chartered in Germany. Earlier, the newspaper "Bild" had reported on the plans.