Russia’s penitentiary service said Monday it was transferring troubled dissident Alexei Navalny, who is on his 20th day of hunger strike, to a prison hospital – amid serious fears for his health.
The decision comes a day after the US threatened the Kremlin with “consequences” if President Vladimir Putin’s main internal opponent dies behind bars, according to France-Presse.
LITTLE CRITICAL NAVALNY Losing feeling in his hands, feet in the middle of a hunger strike, says lawyer
Navalny’s private doctors warned over the weekend that he could die “at any time”.
Russian prison authorities, who banned the 44-year-old’s medical team from visiting him, said doctors had decided to move him to a medical facility inside another penal colony in Vladimir, a town about 110 miles east of Moscow. .
The state penitentiary service, FSIN, said in a statement on Monday that Navalny would be transferred to a hospital for convicts in another criminal settlement in Vladimir, a city east of Moscow. (Photo by AP / Alexander Zemlianichenko, file)
But they insisted the Kremlin critic’s condition was “satisfactory”, adding that he was taking vitamin supplements as part of his medical treatment.
Navalny’s doctor, Dr. Yaroslav Ashikhmin, said on Saturday that the results of tests he received from the Navalny family show him high levels of potassium, which can cause cardiac arrest and high levels of creatinine that indicate kidney damage.
“Our patient could die at any time,” he wrote on Facebook.
Navalny went on a hunger strike to protest his refusal to allow his doctors to visit when he began to have severe back pain and a loss of feeling in his legs.
Navalny now seems to have his head shaved, although he is not sure when this photo was taken. (Instagram)
Russia’s state penitentiary service, FSIN, said Navalny was receiving all the medical help he needed.
His allies convened a nationwide rally on Wednesday, the same day Putin is scheduled to deliver his annual state of the nation address.
Meanwhile, EU foreign ministers are assessing the bloc’s strategy towards Russia amid weakening Naval health and the military’s build-up on Ukraine’s borders.
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EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has already attacked the Kremlin for arresting and treating Navalny on Sunday and insisted he should have access to doctors he trusts.
“All in all, relations with Russia are not improving, but on the contrary, tensions are rising on various fronts,” Borrell said in a statement.
Navalny was arrested in January on his return from Germany, where he spent five months recovering from a nervous breakdown with which he blames the Kremlin – allegations that Russian officials have denied.
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His arrest sparked widespread protests throughout Russia.
A court ordered Navalny to serve two and a half years in the slammer following a 2014 embezzlement conviction that he said was fabricated and that the European Court of Human Rights was considered “arbitrary and manifestly unreasonable.”
Last month, the politician was transferred to a notorious penal colony east of Moscow.