An S7 flight with Alexey Navalny onboard diverted after suspected poisoning of Russian opposition leader

This morning, Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny was travelling from Tomsk Bogashevo airport in Siberia to Moscow Domodedovo onboard S7 Airlines flight S7 2614 (Boeing 737-800 reg. VP-BQF). The flight departed from Tomsk at 08:06 local time and diverted to Omsk about 1:10 into the flight.

According to Navalny’s spokesperson Kira Iarmysh, the plane had to make an emergency landing due to the sudden deterioration in his health.

“I’m sure it was intentional poisoning,” Kira Iarmysh told Moscow’s Echo radio. “Alexey was poisoned, intoxicated” and “is now in intensive care“, she had previously indicated on Twitter.

The 44-year-old opponent is in intensive care at the toxicology department of the Omsk No.1 Emergency Hospital, the state-run TASS news agency reported. “He is in serious condition,” the hospital’s chief doctor, Alexander Murakhovsky, told TASS.

“We think Alexei was poisoned with something mixed with his tea. He didn’t drink anything else this morning,” Iarmysh said on Twitter, adding: “The doctors said that the poison had been absorbed quickly through the hot drink“.

She said she saw Navalny in Tomsk on Thursday morning and he looked “completely fine“. “He only drank black tea at the airport. Immediately after take-off, he lost consciousness,” she added.

Russian TV channel Life posted an amateur video shot on the plane, in which rescuers walk to the back of the plane, where a man appeared to be moaning in pain. The Telegram channel 112 for its part published a video where he was transferred on a stretcher from the plane to an ambulance.