Former chief doctor at hospital that treated Navalny reported missing

The former chief physician at the hospital where Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was treated last year has gone missing.

Citing Russian state news agency TASS, CNN reports that Alexander Murakhovsky was reported to be missing on Saturday. Murakhovsky is currently serving as health minister of the Omsk region, having been promoted to the position after handling Navalny’s hospitalization last year.

The physician was first reported missing to authorities on Saturday after leaving a hunting base riding an all-terrain vehicle on Friday, according to TASS.

“On May 8, 2021, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia for the Omsk Region received a message that in the village of Pospelovo, Bolsheukovsky District, a resident of Omsk, born in 1971, left the hunting base on an ATV going to the forest,” a statement from the regional Interior Ministry of Omsk read. “For about a day, the acquaintances of the disappeared made independent attempts to find the man, after which they reported the incident to the police.”

A search composed of emergency services, police and volunteers has been started. An unmanned all-terrain vehicle was reportedly found about 4 miles away from the hunting base.

Around the time of Navalny’s poisoning Murakhovsky gave multiple press briefings, CNN notes, telling the media that the diagnosis was a “metabolic disorder which caused a sharp drop in blood sugar.”

The German hospital that Navalny was later transferred to found traces of a Soviet nerve agent called Novichok in his system.

Navalny criticized Murakhovsky’s promotion, CNN reports, writing on social media, “You lie, fake test results, are ready to please the bosses in any way – you get an award and a promotion.”

In February, a Russian doctor who treated Navalny died “suddenly” at the age of 55.

Sergey Maximishin was the deputy chief physician at the Omsk emergency hospital where Murakhovsky also worked.

“With regret, we inform you that … the deputy chief physician for anesthesiology and resuscitation of the emergency hospital №1, assistant of the department of Omsk State Medical University, PhD of medical sciences Maximishin Sergey Valentinovich suddenly passed away,” the hospital said in a statement at the time.