Kremlin spokesman doesn't call Navalny by name

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov on Wednesday avoided naming Alexei Navalny during his statement about the suspected poisoning of the Russian opposition leader who remains in a coma at a German hospital.

In a phone interview with Peskov, journalists had asked him why he had not mentioned Navalny by his name during Wednesday's statement.

Peskov responded that Navalny is: "a patient" who was "currently sick."

Navalny, a politician and corruption investigator who is one of Putin’s fiercest critics, fell ill on a flight back to Moscow from Siberia on Thursday and was taken to a hospital in the Siberian city of Omsk after the plane made an emergency landing.

Over the weekend, he was transferred to the Charité hospital in Berlin, where doctors on Monday said they have found indications of “cholinesterase inhibitors” in his system.

The suggestion that Navalny was poisoned has been vehemently rejected in Russia, where a number of Kremlin critics fell victims to suspected poisonings in recent years, since last week.