Navalny under surveillance before falling ill: report

Prominent Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, who fell gravely ill in what his supporters say was a political poisoning was being closely watched by Russian authorities in the preceding days, according to a report by the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper.

The Russian tabloid, citing unnamed security officials, said FSB officers followed Navalny and closely monitored his movements on CCTV during a trip to Siberia. The report provided a detailed account of where he and his team stayed, whom he spoke to and even what they ate during the trip.

The 44-year-old politician and anti-corruption campaigner fell ill on a flight to Moscow on Thursday and was flown to Berlin for emergency treatment. His team says he was poisoned in Siberia, while Russian doctors said he could be suffering from a metabolic disorder.

Read more: Navalny 'stable' after arrival in Berlin for medical treatment

Airport or plane

The security officials claimed that given the level of surveillance Navalny was under, he could have only been poisoned at the airport or on the plane, the report said.

"The scale of surveillance does not surprise me at all. We were perfectly aware of it before," Navalny's spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh wrote in a tweet containing the article. "What is surprising, however, is that [the security officials] did not shy away from describing it."

Navalny's wife and a top aide visited him Sunday at the Berlin Charite hospital where the comatose dissident is being treated by German doctors.

Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) told dpa that the politician is under police protection.

The hospital said it had begun "extensive" diagnostic tests on Navalny. A spokesperson said there would be no official comment on his status before Monday.

NGO: Navalny will survive 'poison attack'

Jaka Bizilj, founder of the Cinema for Peace Foundation, the NGO that organized the air ambulance to transport Navalny to Berlin, told German newspaper Bild that he expects the Kremlin critic to survive his ordeal.

"Navalny will survive the poison attack, but be incapacitated for months as a politician," Bizilj was quoted as saying by the tabloid.

Navalny's spokeswoman Yarmysh expressed surprise at Bizilj's comments, saying that noone had access to information about his condition at the moment. 

"Alexei's family has not asked anyone to report anything to the press about his health," she wrote in the Telegram news channel early
Monday.

"At the moment there are no new details about Alexei's health. We ask everyone to be patient and not to react to untrue  communications," she added. 

Nemtsov's daughter speaks out

Navalny, an outspoken opponent of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has long been in the focus of Russian authorities. He has been arrested multiple times for holding anti-Putin rallies without permission.

Zhanna Nemtsova, a friend of Navalny and daughter of the assassinated Russian opposition politician Boris Nemtsov, told DW that she thinks the latest episode was a poisoning.

"In Russia, there are a lot of political prisoners. Putin's critics are followed. Some of them were killed. My father was killed just five hundred meters away from the Kremlin wall," she said.

When asked who had likely carried out the apparent poisoning, Nemtsova said: "I cannot answer this question, but I can say that Navalny is the most powerful opposition voice in Russia. I think that Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, at least holds political responsibility for his poisoning. 

In 2018, Russia was forced to pay €50,000 in damages after the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the several detentions of Navalny were politically motivated.

dv, jsi/mm (dpa, Reuters)