Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny took part in a rally in Moscow on Feb. 29.
Photo: shamil zhumatov/ReutersMOSCOW—Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny, a fierce critic of President Vladimir Putin and Moscow’s political elite, was admitted to intensive care at a Siberian hospital after a suspected poisoning left him unconscious, his spokeswoman said.
Mr. Navalny started feeling ill after drinking tea early Thursday before a flight to Moscow from the Siberian city of Tomsk, Kira Yarmysh wrote on Twitter. The plane made an emergency landing in the city of Omsk, where Mr. Navalny was admitted to the hospital, she added.
“We assume that Alexei was poisoned with something mixed in his tea; it was the only thing he drank all morning,” Ms. Yarmysh said. “Now Alexei is unconscious.”
Mr. Navalny was hooked up to artificial ventilation at the hospital and in a critical condition, she said, adding that his supporters had called the police. She said doctors there had delayed providing Mr. Navalny’s team with results from his medical analyses and weren’t speaking to Mr. Navalny’s personal doctor, Anastasia Vasilieva.
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“Poisoning is being looked at as one of the possible reasons for the deterioration of his condition,” Anatoly Kalinichenko, a deputy head doctor at the city’s First Emergency Medical Hospital, told a news conference of Russian journalists, adding that he couldn’t say whether Mr. Navalny’s life was in danger.
For years, Mr. Navalny has been a singular voice against Mr. Putin’s two-decade rule, leading protests against him from the street and lashing out against the Kremlin elite to his millions of followers on YouTube. Earlier this year, he led a campaign against a series of constitutional amendments that passed in July, which included a provision to potentially allow Mr. Putin to rule until 2036.
As in other elections, he called for Russians to boycott a referendum on the amendments, saying the vote would be falsified regardless of the real outcome. He said it was better to stay at home than feed into the Kremlin’s propaganda machine, which he said depended on voters to maintain a veneer of democratic legitimacy.
Mr. Navalny’s team said Thursday that he was in Siberia to support independent politicians in coming local elections. He was also looking into corruption allegations against politicians in the pro-Kremlin United Russia party, his local supporters said.
Anatoliy Kalinichenko, deputy chief doctor at the Omsk hospital to which Alexei Navalny was admitted, spoke to the media on Thursday.
Photo: Evgeniy Sofiychuk/Associated PressSince the constitutional vote earlier this summer, a number of opposition members have been detained by authorities and had their properties raided.
Mr. Navalny has been the victim of attacks before. In 2017, a chemical was sprayed in his eye by a man identified by his supporters as a pro-government activist, leaving his vision compromised. The attacker was never found by authorities. Last year, Mr. Navalny said he was poisoned while in police custody after supporting protests against the Kremlin in central Moscow. The Wall Street Journal couldn’t independently confirm that claim.
Other Kremlin critics have also been hospitalized with suspected poisonings in the past. Vocal opposition figure Vladimir Kara-Murza said he was poisoned by agents of the Kremlin in 2015 and 2017 before recovering. In 2018, Sergei Skripal, a former double agent, and his daughter were poisoned in the U.K., where they lived.
The Kremlin didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about Mr. Navalny’s illness. Moscow has previously denied any involvement in causing harm to political opponents, such as Mr. Kara-Murza and the Skripals.
Mr. Navalny’s hospitalization comes as the Kremlin is facing prolonged antigovernment protests in Khabarovsk, a city in the country’s Far East. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of protesters have taken to the streets in Belarus against longtime Putin ally President Alexander Lukashenko after a vote marred by accusations of falsifications. Russia has long sought to pull Belarus closer to Moscow.
—Georgi Kantchev and Valentina Ochirova contributed to this article.
Write to Thomas Grove at thomas.grove@wsj.com
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