The Russian prison service said on Monday that it would move the sick dissident Alexei Navalny, who is on the twentieth day of a 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 biggest domestic opponent dies behind bars, according to Agence France-Presse.
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Navalny’s private doctors warned over the weekend that he could die at any moment.
Russian prison authorities, who banned the 44-year-old’s medical team from visiting him, said doctors decided to take him to a medical facility on the premises of another penal colony in Vladimir, a city about 110 kilometers east of Moscow, to relocate. .
The state prison service, FSIN, said in a statement on Monday that Navalny would be transferred to a hospital for detainees in another penal colony in Vladimir, a city east of Moscow. (AP Photo / Alexander Zemlianichenko, file)
But they maintained that the Kremlin critic was ‘satisfactory’, adding that he was taking vitamin supplements as part of his medical treatment.
Navalny’s physician, dr. Yaroslav Ashikhmin, said on Saturday that the test results he received from Navalny’s family show him with a sharply increased amount of potassium, which can cause cardiac arrest, and elevated creatinine levels indicating weakened kidneys.
“Our patient could die at any moment,” he wrote on Facebook.
Navalny went on a hunger strike to refuse to visit his doctors when he began to experience severe back pain and a loss of feeling in his legs.
Navalny now has a shaved head, although it is uncertain when this photo was taken. (Instagram)
The Russian civil service, FSIN, said Navalny received all the medical help he needed.
His allies on Wednesday called for a nationwide rally on the same day as Putin to deliver his annual state of the nation address.
Meanwhile, European Union foreign ministers are assessing the bloc’s strategy towards Russia amid the deterioration of Navalny health and following the military build-up of Ukraine’s borders.
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Josep Borrell, EU foreign policy chief, had already attacked the Kremlin on Sunday for arresting and treating Navalny and demanded that he have access to doctors he trusted.
“Overall, relations with Russia are not improving, but on the contrary, tensions are rising in various areas,” Borrell said in a statement.
Navalny was arrested in January on his return from Germany, where he spent five months recovering from a nerve agent who poisoned the Kremlin – accusations that Russian officials rejected.
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His arrest has sparked widespread protests across Russia.
A court has ordered Navalny to serve 2 1/2 years in jail on a 2014 conviction he said was fabricated and the European Court of Human Rights is considered “arbitrary and apparently unreasonable”.
Last month, the politician was transferred to a notorious penal colony east of Moscow.