Putin opponent may have been exposed to toxic agent: Doctor

Moscow, July 29 

Russia’s jailed opposition politician Alexei Navalny might have been exposed to an unidentified “toxic agent,” his personal doctor said on Monday, while health officials insisted his condition was satisfactory.

“Some toxic agent may be the reason for Alexei Navalny’s ‘illness’,” his physician Anastasia Vasilyeva said in a post on Facebook, adding that officials at Moscow’s hospital No 64, which treated him, have behaved strangely.

On Sunday, President Vladimir Putin’s top opponent was rushed from jail to hospital suffering an acute allergic reaction.

Vasilyeva said the 43-year-old could have been exposed to an “unknown chemical substance”, complaining she was not allowed to properly examine him. A representative of the hospital said Navalny was “in a satisfactory condition.”  

“His body temperature is 36.6°C,” the representative said, declining to release Navalny’s precise diagnosis. In a new post on Monday, Vasilyeva, who treated Navalny for a serious eye injury in the past, accused the doctors of not wanting to investigate what had caused Navalny’s illness. — AFP