Putin critic Kara-Murza in coma suffered 'acute poisoning'

A prominent Kremlin critic and Russian opposition figure who has been in a coma with organ failure since last week has been diagnosed with “acute poisoning by an undefined substance”, his wife has said.

Vladimir Kara-Murza, 35, who works for Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s Open Russia foundation, had been in Russia to screen a documentary film about his friend Boris Nemtsov, the opposition leader and former deputy Prime Minister who was gunned down near the Kremlin in 2015.

Kara-Murza was about to fly back to the US for his daughter’s eighth birthday when he woke up at 5am on Thursday with an accelerated heartbeat and difficulty breathing. He remained in a stable but critical condition on Tuesday in a medically induced coma, his wife, Yevgeniya, said.

Kara-Murza was taken to the same hospital in 2015, when he was diagnosed with acute kidney failure in connection with poisoning and only just survived. He later said it had been an attempt to kill him for his political activities. The symptoms were the same in this latest attempt on his life, his wife said.

There has so far been no confirmation of foul play but the activist's wife said samples have been sent to laboratories in France and Israel to ascertain the origin of the poisoning after tests in Russia revealed "nothing".

Kara-Murza had asked Russia's Investigative Committee to probe whether he had suffered intentional poisoning but no criminal case was opened.

The Kara-Murzas live in the US with their three young children, but he frequently returns to Russia.

On Tuesday she said Donald Trump, who said in an interview this weekend that he respected Vladimir Putin, should realise that a true leader would not allow people to be “poisoned because of their beliefs”.

Together with Nemtsov, Kara-Murza helped organise street protests against Putin and co-authored a 2013 report about corruption in preparations for the president’s prized Sochi Olympics.

Kara-Murza is not the first Putin critic to have been poisoned. Former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko died in London in 2006 after drinking tea that was found to be laced with polonium-210, a the radioactive substance. An inquiry last year said two Russian agents had murdered Litvinenko and that the hit was “probably approved” by Putin.