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Former Russian Prime Minister Says He Was Poisoned but not by Putin

Former Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar, the first Prime Minister in post-Soviet Russia, said Thursday that he was convinced that his mysterious illness that he suffers from is a result of poisoning initiated last month by opponents of the Russian authorities. In an article published in the Financial Times, Gaidar described the first days of his illness and its symptoms: fatigue, nose and mouth bleeds, vomiting and loss of conciseness.

Gaidar`s health began to deteriorate towards the end of November while he attended a conference in Ireland. Only a day after the former KGB spy, Alexander Litvinenko died in London, the 50-year-old economist began feeling ill and was rushed to intensive care. The Irish doctors did not think that the condition was a result of radioactive poisoning but rather a drastic shift in the patient`s health. A day after Gaidar was flown back to Moscow, but at this point it was impossible to check if he was poisoned.

"What we know by now is that the cause of his disease was not food poisoning, but we do know it was poisoning," said Yevgenia Albats, a Moscow author and close friend of Gaidar, "Gaidar barely survived, he was in a extremely dangerous condition." Gaidar said he doesn`t believe he was poisoned by Russian President Putin, saying that would be against his interests, especially after the murder of Litvinenko. Gaidar said he believed that someone who opposes the Russian authorities and would stand to benefit from further deterioration of Russian-Western relations.