Russian police officers patrol outside the penal colony detained by Alexey Navalny.
Photographer: Kirill Kudryavstev / AFP / Getty Images
Photographer: Kirill Kudryavstev / AFP / Getty Images
Russian authorities have decided to move opposition leader Alexey Navalny to a prison hospital after allies warned that his health had failed amid a hunger strike and the US had threatened the Kremlin with unspecified “consequences” if he died.
Navalny is in a “satisfactory state”, the local branch of the federal penal service said in a website statement on Monday. He agreed to ‘vitamin therapy’ and did daily examinations by a doctor.
The transfer means that Navalny’s condition “has deteriorated so much that even the torture chamber acknowledges it, ”Ivan Zhdanov, head of the activist’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, wrote on Twitter.
The 44-year-old’s condition has become the latest flashpoint in the growing tension between Russia and the West. The US and Europe are urging President Vladimir Putin to provide proper medical care for Navalny, who began a hunger strike in prison on March 31 to demand access to his personal doctors for acute back and leg pain. Opposition leaders called for protests in Russia on Sunday, April 21, the day Putin delivered his annual state of the nation address, after warning that the Kremlin’s most outspoken critic was only days of death.
WATCH: The US warns that there will be ‘consequences’ if Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny dies in prison.
Dawn: Europe. ”(Source: Bloomberg)
Amid fears of more potential sanctions, the ruble traded 0.4% weaker against the dollar from 0:13 in Moscow. It was the worst performance in emerging markets after the Indian rupee.
“We are looking at different costs that we would impose, and I’m not going to telegraph it in public at the moment,” U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday. “But we have said that it will have consequences if Mr. Navalny dies. ‘
Russia retaliated defiantly after the comments.
“It is obvious that the development of Russia as a strong, sovereign state has no interest,” Vyacheslav Volodin, speaker of the lower house of parliament and a close ally of President Vladimir Putin, told Telegram on Monday. said. Russia needs to ensure that measures are targeted at its key energy sector and industry, he said.
The prison service said a commission of doctors had decided to transfer Navalny to the hospital in the high-security IQ-3 prison in the city of Vladimir, about 190 kilometers from Moscow, “specializing in dynamic observation of such patients. “It did not specify whether the move had already taken place.
Navalny has been detained in another camp in the area since March 11 for violating parole rules while recovering in Germany from an almost fatal poisoning in Siberia that he and Western governments blame the Kremlin. Russian authorities deny any involvement.
Alexey Navalny stands in a cage during a trial on charges of libel in the Babuskinsky District Court in Moscow, Russia on February 12.
Source: Babuskinsky District Court
Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, called for the immediate and unconditional release of the prisoner. Navalny’s The fate is in Putin’s hands, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said on Sunday, while German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas told the Bild newspaper that Berlin was “urgently” demanding that he should receive adequate medical care.
Anastasia Vasilieva, who heads the Alliance of Physicians’ Union backed by Navalny, posted a copy of his blood test results which she said were ‘critical’ potassium levels. “This means kidney failure, which can lead to a serious disruption of his heartbeat at any time,” including the possibility of heart failure, she said. Twitter. She wrote on Monday that the IQ-3 prison hospital to which he was moving was not suitable to treat him.
In a post on his Instagram account on Friday, Navalny’s allies reported that a prison official had warned him that a blood test indicated a “serious deterioration” in his health and that he would be forced not to end the protest. .
US sanctions
President Joe Biden on Thursday ordered a series of new sanctions against Russia, including restrictions on the purchase of new government debt, in response to allegations that Moscow was behind a hood of SolarWinds Corp and interfered in the US election last year.
Yet the movements were calibrated to punish the Kremlin for past behavior, while relations did not deteriorate further, especially as tensions over a Russian military build-up near Ukraine grew. Biden offered to meet with Putin later this year, an invitation that Russia said he would respond “positively”.
Asked about Navalny’s condition on Saturday, Biden told reporters: “This is completely unfair.”
Putin, poison and the importance of Alexey Navalny: Quick recording
Biden called Putin in a telephone conversation on Tuesday about the poisoning of the opposition leader, who publicly blames US intelligence the Russian Federal Security Service. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron also questioned Putin in a March 30 call on Navalny.
Macron asked for “clear red lines ”in dealing with Russia in an interview with CBS’s Face the Nation broadcast on Sunday. “This is a failure of our common credibility with regard to Russia,” he said.