A Russian man who disguised himself as a medical worker so he could treat his COVID-19-stricken grandmother and reveal the bleak picture of how coronavirus patients were being treated in a hospital in the Siberian city of Tomsk has fled the country fearing for his safety.
Sergei Samborsky told The Insider investigative group on November 28 that he is currently in Georgia after leaving Russia.
In October, after he was not allowed to see his hospitalized 84-year-old grandmother, Samborsky dressed up in protective gear to look like a hospital worker. This enabled him access to his grandmother, Yulia Yemelyashina.
Samborsky posted a shocking video of his grandmother in the hospital, showing her unconscious, covered in bruises and bedsores while lying on a urine-soaked mattress.
The video caused a public outcry. Yemelyashina died days later.
Samborsky filed a lawsuit against the hospital director, Aleksandr Kholopov, accusing him of failing to organize proper conditions for treating COVID-19 patients, which lead directly to the death of his grandmother.
Since then, Samborsky says he was forced to leave his job.
He says he has also received threats from unknown people by phone and that local prosecutors summoned him for questioning, hinting that the video he had taken in the hospital had been doctored to "discredit the Health Ministry."
