Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is “seriously ill” in the penal colony where he was detained and was recently transferred to the prison’s infirmary to be treated for a respiratory illness, reports Tuesday.
The longtime Vladimir Putin critic, who has been struggling with his health, said in a letter on Monday that he was coughing and had a fever of 100.6F, reports the Guardian.
Navalny has reportedly been tested on COVID-19, but it is not clear if the results came back or if he tested positive.
However, several inmates from his ward have been previously treated for tuberculosis, the opposition said.
Olga Mikhailova, a lawyer for Navalny, told the Echo of Moscow radio station that a member of Navalny’s legal team visited him on Tuesday and he was “in a bad condition.”
‘He lost a lot of weight, and he has a strong cough and a temperature of [100.6F], ”Mikhailova said.
“This man is seriously ill. It is a total outrage that the IQ-2 [prison] drove him to this state. ”
Navalny, 44, is serving a two-and-a-half-year sentence on charges of embezzlement that human rights activists have said were educated and politically motivated and were the result of the lawyer’s attacks on Putin.
He was arrested in January after returning from Germany, where he was twice poisoned with a Soviet-era nerve agent.
Last week, Navalny declared a hunger strike when prison officials refused to see a personal doctor for help treating pain and numbness in his back and legs, making it difficult for him to walk.
He had previously described the prison as a ‘sincere concentration camp’.
On Tuesday, several supporters traveling to the prison to protest the lack of medical care were arrested by Russian police, including Anastasia Vasilyeva, head of the Russian Doctors’ Alliance, and three other members of the group.
Reporters from CNN and Belsat, a Polish television station, were also detained, the Guardian reported.
“We are coming here today to offer help,” Vasilyeva told reporters before being handcuffed. “There is no war here. Let’s solve this problem like humans. ”
Navalny’s wife, Yulia, on Tuesday published a letter from the jailer stating that her husband could not be sent to a hospital because he did not have his passport.
She further alleges that the warden teased her husband by roasting a chicken in front of him and handing out sweets to fellow prisoners while Navalny maintained his hunger strike.
