The Insider detailed the suspected poisonings of Novaya Gazeta’s Elena Kostyuchenko, Ekho Moskvy’s Irina Babloyan and Free Russia Foundation’s Natalia Arno in an article published on Wednesday, Poland’s wirtualnemedia.pl website wrote.
‘Poison absorbed through skin or ingested’
Following Russia’s February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Kostyuchenko worked as a war correspondent for her newspaper, reporting on Russian atrocities in the occupied Kherson city, The Insider noted.
After her dispatch was published, Russian authorities issued a notice to Novaya Gazeta, suggesting criminal proceedings were imminent, and the newspaper’s owners decided to suspend the outlet for safety reasons, the website added.
Kostyuchenko stayed in Ukraine determined to continue her work, but a source in Ukrainian intelligence warned her Russian forces had planned to murder her; her editor at Novaya Gazeta also warned that if she returned to Russia, she would be killed.
Kostyuchenko relocated to Berlin and began working for the Vilnius-based Russian independent outlet Meduza.
It was in Germany that she suffered a suspected poisoning attempt in October 2022, The Insider reported.
On her train journey back to Berlin from the Ukrainian consulate in Munich, where she had applied for a visa for another reporting trip to the war-torn country, Kostyuchenko began feeling unwell.
Her head was pounding, her heart was beating very fast and soon she also developed severe abdominal pain, vertigo and nausea , The Insider reported.
Kostyuchenko visited a local clinic where the doctors initially thought she was suffering from aftereffects of COVID-19, but bloods test found she had “elevated liver enzymes Alanine transaminase (ALT) and Aspartate transaminase (AST) — five times higher than normal and not associated with Covid,” The Insider noted.
During further tests, which weren’t conclusive, Kostyuchenko also developed further symptoms, such as the swelling of palms and feet and insomnia, wirtualnemedia.pl reported.
After a month of testing, doctors finally ruled out any other causes of Kostyuchenko’s ailments than poisoning, The Insider wrote.
Kostyuchenko then underwent tests at the Charité university hospital in Berlin, “the same hospital that treated [Russian opposition activist Alexei] Navalny after his poisoning in 2020,” the website added.
However, there took place an unexplained delay in the examination of her blood samples and the results were subsequently made confidential, wirtualnemedia.pl reported.
The Insider wrote: “The Insider spoke to a host of medical experts, doctors and chemists experienced in diagnosing poisonings including a former lead chemist at the Organization for the Prohibition for Chemical Weapons, the international watchdog. All agreed that Kostyuchenko’s symptoms cannot be explained by anything other than exogenous poisoning. Her toxicology indicated acute damage to the liver (thus the significant increase in ALT and AST enzymes) and kidneys. The experts believe Kostyuchenko was exposed to some kind of organochlorine compound, such as dichloroethane. And they further suggest that the poison was absorbed through the skin or ingested.”
‘Exogenous poisoning’
Also in October 2022, fellow independent journalist Irina Babloyan, whose Ekho Moskvy radio station had been shuttered after the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine, experienced similar symptoms while in Georgia.
A few months later Babloyan moved to Berlin and “submitted blood samples for toxicology testing at the Charité hospital,” The Insider noted.
“However, several days later the clinic told her that her samples had been ‘lost,’ the website added.
According to experts interviewed by The Insider, “the clinical picture described by Babloyan cannot be convincingly explained by a disease; exogenous poisoning seems to them the most reasonable diagnosis,” although “discovery of the toxin (or toxins) is now unlikely given the elapsed time period since the presumed exposure.”
‘Nerve toxins’
Free Russia Foundation President Natalia Arno felt unwell while visiting Prague for a private event in May 2023, The Insider reported.
After returning to her hotel, “Arno at once noticed the door to her room was open and she’d remembered closing it,” the website noted.
The activist said that “nothing was missing and everything seemed as she’d left it except for a strange odor resembling perfume, which hadn’t been there before.”
Arno went to sleep and awoke in the morning “in agonizing pain” that spread from her head to the entire body, and “her arms and legs went numb,” the Insider reported.
She took an earlier flight home to Washington, sought medical help and contacted the FBI, the website added.
The FBI probe is ongoing and investigators have so far ruled out that Arno had been subjected to a nerve agent from the Soviet-developed Novichok family.
Meanwhile, “Arno’s doctors maintain she was indeed poisoned, specifically by ‘nerve toxins,’ The Insider reported.
‘Russians who fled homeland must be careful’
Elena Kostyuchenko has urged “any other Russians who have fled their homeland and now reside overseas to be careful and to immediately report unusual physical symptoms to medical professionals — also to get in touch with The Insider, which is actively investigating all suspected cases of poisoning,” the website wrote.
Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, launching the largest military campaign in Europe since World War II.
Thursday is day 540 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
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Source: wirtualnemedia.pl, theins.ru