Doctors treating former Russian prime minister Yegor Gaidar in a Moscow hospital said he was likely poisoned, a Russian newspaper reported yesterday.
Speculation emerged that the case might be linked to the deaths of a Russian ex-spy and a top journalist.
"The doctors are leaning towards the conclusion that all the symptoms ... point specifically to poisoning," Gaidar's daughter Maria told reporters with the Kommersant newspaper.
The doctors will make their final diagnosis today, with "a poison unknown to civilian medicine," the most likely cause of his illness, she said.
Gaidar was in satisfactory condition late on Wednesday but "there was a serious threat to his life" after he fell ill last Friday.
Gaidar was visiting Ireland at the time in order to attend a conference, his daughter said on NTV television.
Gaidar's illness came one day after the death in London of former Russian secret services agent Alexander Litvinenko, who was poisoned by polonium-210, a rare radioactive substance.
Before his death, Litvinenko himself blamed his poisoning on President Vladimir Putin.
The Kremlin has rejected the charges.
Putin telephoned Gaidar to wish him a quick recovery, London's Financial Times reported yesterday, citing the Kremlin.
Anatoly Chubais, the influential head of Russia's state electricity company and a longtime associate of Gaidar's, connected the former premier's illness with Litvinenko's death and the recent murder of journalist Anna Politkovskaya, suggesting that the Kremlin's enemies were behind all three.
"This deadly design would have been extremely attractive for those supporting unconstitutional, violent means of changing power in Russia," Chubais said to RIA Novosti.
Ultra-nationalist parliament deputy Vladimir Zhirinovsky blamed Gaidar's condition on foreign powers attempting "to destabilize the situation or create an atmosphere of suspicion" in the context of next year's parliamentary elections, RIA Novosti reported.
Gaidar fell ill after eating breakfast where he was staying outside Dublin, he told the Financial Times.
The former prime minister managed to answer questions about his book -- The Death of the Empire: Lessons for Contemporary Russia -- in an appearance put in at the National University of Ireland in Maynooth, before he had to be taken to a hospital.
He was transferred from Ireland to a hospital in Moscow on Sunday.
"We are concerned by the very fact of the poisoning and would not like to make premature conclusions," said opposition politician Leonid Gozman, one of the leaders of the liberal Union of Right Forces Party, of which Gaidar was a co-founder.
As Russia's first post-Soviet prime minister, Gaidar was a chief architect of reforms known as "shock therapy."
Although Gaidar's policies helped transform the communist economy they are today widely blamed in Russia for capital flight and an economic collapse in 1998.
Utilities chief Chubais, who also helped organize the reforms, survived an assassination attempt last year.
Gaidar now heads an economic think tank in Moscow that frequently criticizes Putin's policy of increasing state control over the economy.
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