A Russian doctor who treated Alexei Navalny after his poisoning has suddenly died, hospital says

• The doctor who treated Alexei Navalny for poison has suddenly died, his hospital said Thursday.
• Sergey Maximishin, 55, was deputy chief physician at Omsk Emergency Hospital No. 1.
• Maximishin "knew more than anyone else about Alexei's condition," Navalny's chief of staff said.

A doctor who treated Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny after his poisoning last year has died, according to the hospital.

Fifty-five year old Sergey Maximishin, who was the deputy chief physician at Omsk Emergency Hospital No. 1, "suddenly passed away," his hospital said, according to a Thursday CNN report.

The statement did not mention the cause of death, but Galina Nazarova, the press secretary of the Omsk region Ministry of Health, told the Russian Life.ru news site that that Maximishin "died of a heart attack."

Navalny was rushed to the hospital on August 20, 2020, after falling ill on a flight from the Siberian city of Tomsk to Moscow, which had made an emergency landing in Omsk. Maximishin died in the same intensive care unit that hosted Navalny in August 2020, Radio Liberty reported.

Navalny's chief of staff, Leonid Volkov, told CNN that Maximishin directly oversaw Navalny's treatment.

"Sergey Maximishin was the head of department that treated Alexei Navalny and was in charge of his treatment - specifically his medically-induced coma," Volkov said.

Volkov told CNN that the doctor "knew more than anyone else about Alexei's condition so I can't dismiss possibility of foul play."

"However, Russia's healthcare system is very poor and it's not uncommon for doctors of his age to suddenly die," he said, but adding: "I doubt there will any investigation into his death."

After Navalny's poisoning, doctors at the Omsk hospital put him into an induced coma and kept him for 48 hours, before eventually allowing him to be airlifted to Berlin's Charité hospital for specialist care on August 22.

"We can't allow him to be transported under the care of his relatives if the patient's condition elicits concern," Alexander Murakhovskiy, chief physician at the hospital, said on August 21. "Anything could happen. Even the worst could happen."

At the time Navalny's team criticized the doctors, saying they had no reason to detain him.

"The ban on transporting Navalny is an attempt on his life being carried out right now by doctors and the deceitful authorities that have authorized it," Navalny's spokeswoman Kira Yarmish said.

Murakhovsky had disagreed, saying after Navalny was evacuated: "The Omsk Emergency Hospital No. 1 made quite an effort to save Alexei Navalny's life, there can be no doubt about it," the BBC reported.

The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons determined in October 2020 that Navalny was poisoned with Novichok nerve agent.

Navalny has outright accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of ordering the hit on his life, and an investigation by CNN and Bellingcat found that the hit was carried out by agents of Russia's FSB spy agency.

The Kremlin has denied involvement, and in September 2020, Putin suggested that Navalny poisoned himself.

Navalny was arrested upon his arrival to Russia from Berlin, where he was being treated, on January 17. On Tuesday, a Moscow court sentenced him to three and a half years' imprisonment, accusing him of violating a 2014 suspended sentence after missing several scheduled parole meetings with Russia's prison service.

When asked why he missed the meetings, Navalny told the court: "I was in a coma."