A close associate of Russian opposition leader Alexi Navalny, who is in a coma in a Siberian hospital, said German doctors now have access to Mr Navalny as supporters push for him to be moved to a Berlin clinic.
"The German doctors who came on this flight from Nuremberg, who were refused to get access to this patient, finally just got access to him several minutes ago," Leonid Volkov said during a news conference in Berlin.
Mr Navalny (44) fell ill on a flight back to Moscow from the Siberian city of Tomsk yesterday and was taken to hospital after the plane made an emergency landing in Omsk.
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His team made arrangements to transfer him to Charite, a clinic in Berlin that has a history of treating famous foreign leaders or dissidents, but local doctors refused to authorise a transfer, saying the politician was too unstable to be transported.
Mr Navalny, one of President Vladimir Putin's fiercest critics, was admitted to the intensive care unit following what his supporters are calling a suspected poisoning that they believe was engineered by the Kremlin.
A plane with German specialists and all the necessary equipment landed at Omsk airport this morning, prepared to take Mr Navalny to the clinic in Berlin.
But doctors treating Mr Navalny said his condition was too unstable to transport him and bristled at the idea of consulting with German specialists, saying that doctors that flew in from Moscow overnight were competent enough.
Omsk hospital deputy chief doctor Anatoly Kalinichenko also said that no traces of poison were found in Mr Navalny's body.
"Poisoning as a diagnosis remains on the back burner, but we don't believe that the patient suffered from poisoning," Dr Kalinichenko told reporters.
Dr Kalinichenko added that a diagnosis has been determined and relayed to Mr Navalny's family members.
He refused to reveal it to reporters, citing a law preventing medical workers from disclosing confidential patient information.
Mr Navalny's spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh tweeted that the politician's family was not given a diagnosis, but rather "a range of symptoms that can be interpreted differently".
"Doctors still can't determine the cause of Alexei's condition," she said.
"The ban on transferring Navalny is needed to stall and wait until the poison in his body can no longer be traced. Yet every hour of stalling creates a threat to his life," Ms Yarmysh tweeted.
German officials have been in contact with both Russians and a private group that sent a plane to pick Mr Navalny up, and support the initiative.
"If Mr Navalny wants to get treated in Berlin and if he is able to come to Berlin, the Charite hospital is obviously ready," Berlin mayor Michael Mueller told the German news agency dpa.
Like many other opposition politicians in Russia, Mr Navalny has been frequently detained by law enforcement and harassed by pro-Kremlin groups.
In 2017, he was attacked by several men who threw antiseptic in his face, damaging an eye.
Last year, Mr Navalny was rushed to hospital from prison, where he was serving a sentence following an administrative arrest, with what his team said was suspected poisoning.
Doctors said he had a severe allergic attack and discharged him back to prison the following day.
Mr Navalny's Foundation for Fighting Corruption has been exposing graft among government officials, including some at the highest level.
Last month, he had to shut the foundation after a financially devastating lawsuit from Yevgeny Prigozhin, a businessman with close ties to the Kremlin.
The most prominent member of Russia's opposition, Mr Navalny campaigned to challenge Mr Putin in the 2018 presidential election, but was barred from running.
He set up campaign offices across Russia and has been promoting opposition candidates in regional elections, challenging members of Russia's ruling party, United Russia.
One of his associates in Khabarovsk, a city in Russia's Far East that has been engulfed in mass protests against the arrest of the region's governor, was detained last week after calling for a strike at a rally.