Russian doctors have proposed to their German colleagues that they establish a joint group on the case of Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny, the president of Russia's National Medical Chamber, noted paediatrician Leonid Roshal, told reporters on Saturday.
"Many people are concerned about Navalny's fate, and the National Medical Chamber has now appealed to the German Medical Chamber ... in order to create an expert group with them to study the main reason for Navalny's condition," Roshal said.
The paediatrician added that the reasons were not clear yet, noting that Russian doctors treating Navalny did their job very well and saved the patient. Studies carried out in Russia did not show that the politician was poisoned though, he noted.
"Let us gather calmly — the representatives and specialists of Russia, as well as toxicologists and specialists from Germany — and we will discuss whether or not [Navalny was poisoned], because if it turns out that Navalny was, indeed, poisoned, we believe that it is necessary to initiate a criminal case in Russia," Roshal said.
According to Roshal, the Russian side has sent a request to German law enforcement agencies, as well as German doctors regarding the situation with Navalny, but there has been no answer yet.
On 20 August, Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny fell gravely ill during a domestic Russian flight. Following an emergency landing in the Siberian city of Omsk, he was taken to a local hospital and, according to regional doctors, he arrived just 17 minutes after landing.
For the next 44 hours, doctors waged an uninterrupted struggle for his life, as he went into a coma and was put on an artificial lung ventilator.
Upon conducting multiple tests, Russian medics established that no traces of poison had been found in his system, saying that Navalny's condition was caused by an abrupt drop of glucose in his blood due to a metabolic imbalance.
On 22 August, Navalny was flown to Berlin for further treatment. German doctors claimed that they had found traces of a substance from the group of cholinesterase inhibitors in his body, which the Russian doctors denied, referring to his test results.