Following Scotland Yard's probe into the radioactive killing of a former Russian spy, Irish police said Friday they launched an investigation into the mysterious poisoning of a former Russian premier.
Gaidar, 50, a former acting prime minister and architect of economic reforms in post-Soviet Russia, began vomiting suddenly and fainted at a conference in Dublin Friday. Doctors said he was poisoned but have not identified the substance yet.
"Doctors see no natural reasons for the poisoning," Gaidar's press secretary, Valery Natarov, said. "It was definitely not food poisoning."
Gaidar, now head of the Institute for the Economy in Transition, remained unconscious for three hours and was then transferred to a Moscow hospital.
His daughter, Maria, said her father was on an intravenous drip for eight hours a day.
Doctors said earlier Gaidar's illness was caused by poisoning, but have not identified the poison.
The Kremlin's reputation has been overshadowed by two recent high-profile killings. Anna Politkovskaya, an investigative journalist and Kremlin critic, was gunned down in Moscow in October in an apparent contract killing.
Alexander Litvinenko, a security service defector who allegedly investigated the murder, died in London last week from suspected radioactive poisoning.
Following his death, Western media circulated a statement in which he blamed the Kremlin and President Vladimir Putin for his alleged poisoning. The Kremlin denied involvement.
Both Politkovskaya and Litvinenko were linked to Russia's fugitive oligarch Boris Berezovsky, who had vast clout under Yeltsin, but is now living in London with a British passport. Berezovsky is wanted in Russia on fraud charges and attempts to organize a coup.
