MOSCOW—Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny, a fierce critic of President Vladimir Putin and Moscow’s political elite, was admitted to the intensive-care unit at a Siberian hospital after a suspected poisoning left him unconscious, his spokeswoman said.
Mr. Navalny started to feel ill on a flight to Moscow nearly an hour after drinking tea in the airport of the Siberian city of Tomsk early Thursday, Kira Yarmysh told The Wall Street Journal. While in the air, the plane crew searched for a doctor among the passengers.
“He said he wasn’t feeling well and went pale,” she said, adding that a little more than an hour after takeoff the plane made an emergency landing in the city of Omsk. Mr. Navalny was admitted to the intensive-care unit at a local hospital and was breathing with the help of a ventilator, she said.
Doctors said he was in critical but stable condition.
“We assume that Alexei was poisoned with something mixed in his tea; it was the only thing he drank all morning,” Ms. Yarmysh wrote on Twitter. “Now Alexei is unconscious.”