Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is standing inside a glass cell during a court hearing in Moscow’s Babushkinsky district court on February 20, 2021.
Kirill Kudryavtsev | AFP | Getty Images
A doctor for imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who is in the third week of a hunger strike, says his health is deteriorating rapidly and the 44-year-old critic in the Kremlin could be on the verge of death.
Physician Yaroslav Ashikhmin said on Saturday that the test results he received from Navalny’s family showed him with a sharply elevated level of potassium, which can cause cardiac arrest, and elevated creatinine levels indicating weakened kidneys.
“Our patient could die at any moment,” he said in a Facebook post.
Anastasia Vasilyeva, head of the Navalny-backed Alliance of Physicians’ Union, said on Twitter that “immediate action is needed.”
Navalny is Russian President Vladimir Putin’s most visible and stubborn opponent.
His personal doctors may not see him in jail. He stopped starving to refuse to let them visit when he began to experience severe back pain and a loss of feeling in his legs. The Russian civil service said Navalny was receiving all the medical help he needed.
Navalny was arrested on January 17 when he returned from Germany to Russia, where he spent five months recovering from Soviet nerve agent poisoning he blamed on the Kremlin. Russian officials have denied any involvement and even questioned whether Navalny was poisoned, which was confirmed by several European laboratories.
Asked about Navalny’s deteriorating condition, US President Joe Biden told reporters on Saturday: “This is totally unfair and totally inappropriate. Based on the poison and then a hunger strike.”
Navalny was ordered to serve 2 1/2 years in prison on the grounds that his long recovery in Germany violated a suspended sentence due to a conviction for fraud in a case that, according to Navalny, was politically motivated.