MOSCOW (AP) – A lawyer for imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who has complained of severe back and leg pain in custody, said on Wednesday that doctors had found him suffering from two spinal fractures.
Vadim Kobzev told the Interfax news agency that Navalny also has a spinal protrusion and is starting to lose his feeling in his hands.
Navalny went on a hunger strike last week over what he calls poor medical care in the Russian prison. On Tuesday, the leader of the Navalny-backed Alliance of Physicians’ Union was detained by police after trying to get to jail to talk to doctors.
Navalny, 44, is Russian President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest domestic opponent. He was arrested in January when he returned from Germany to Moscow, where he spent five months recovering from a nerve agent poisoning he blamed on the Kremlin. Russian authorities have denied the allegations. Yet laboratories in Germany and elsewhere in Europe have confirmed that Navalny was poisoned with the Soviet-era Novichok nerve agent.
A Russian court has ordered Navalny to serve a two-and-a-half-year prison sentence in February for violating the terms of his probation, including when he recovered in Germany, due to a conviction in 2014. Navalny ruled that fabrication rejected, and the European Commission on Human Rights finds it ‘arbitrary and apparently unreasonable’.
Navalny said in an Instagram post on Wednesday that prison authorities were trying to undermine his hunger strike by allowing aromatic chicken to be cooked in the kitchen of his unit, without disobeying regulations and putting sweets in his clothes pockets. .
Do you know what seems to be the most important thing in the first phase of the hunger strike in prison? Look at your bags, ”he wrote.
Navalny’s captivity drew widespread criticism from the West. White House spokesman Jen Psaki said on Wednesday: “We call on the Russian authorities to take all necessary steps to ensure his safety and health,” adding that “we are upholding Mr Navalny’s imprisonment. “Follow-up charges are considered politically motivated and a gross injustice, and we stand with like-minded allies and partners to demand his immediate release.”
Authorities transferred Navalny from a Moscow jail last month to the IQ-2 penal colony in the Vladimir region, 85 kilometers east of the Russian capital. The facility in the city of Pokrov stands out among Russian prisoners for its particularly strict prisoner, who pays attention for hours.
Within weeks of being captured, Navalny said he had severe back and leg pain and was effectively deprived of sleep because a guard examined him hourly at night. He went on a hunger strike on March 31 and demanded that he have access to proper medication and a visit from his doctor.
The Russian civil service said Navalny was receiving all the medical help he needed.
Another Navalny lawyer, Olga Mikhailova, said a neurologist who consulted Navalny’s organization said the treatment prescribed in the prison was ineffective.
Navalny said Monday that three of the 15 people he is staying with have been diagnosed with tuberculosis, a contagious disease that spreads through the air. He said he had a strong cough and fever with a temperature of 38.1 degrees Celsius.
The civil service said on Monday that Navalny was the sanitary unit of the prison after an investigation found him with “signs of a respiratory illness, including high fever.”
Mikhailova said on Wednesday that Navalny’s fever had subsided, but he was still coughing and was weak due to the hunger strike.