MOSCOW — Aleksei A. Navalny, Russia’s most prominent opposition leader, was on a ventilator in intensive care and unconscious in a Siberian hospital on Thursday after suffering symptoms of what his spokeswoman called poisoning. A plane carrying Mr. Navalny, 44, a high-profile critic of President Vladimir V. Putin, made an emergency landing in Omsk while en route to Moscow after he started feeling unwell, the spokeswoman, Kira Yarmysh, said on Twitter. “We assume that Alexei was poisoned with something mixed with his tea,” Ms. Yarmysh wrote. “That’s the only thing he drank this morning.” She later added that the police had been called to the hospital at “our request.”A photograph shared on social media showed Mr. Navalny, who challenged Mr. Putin in the 2018 presidential election, drinking from a cup at the airport cafeteria in Tomsk, from where the flight originated.

Source: New York Times August 20, 2020 06:17 UTC