Aleksei Navalny has decided to stop the hunger strike. The Russian dissident himself announced it on social media, after being visited by his personal doctors. “A further fast can cause significant damage to his health and lead to the saddest result: death,” the doctors write in a letter published by the site Mediaziona, thanking them for the enormous support received from the public opinion of half the planet. . “Our patient was taken to a civilian hospital in Vladimir, where independent examinations were carried out.”
A young protester stopped by the police in Moscow during the protests in support of Navalny
Yesterday nearly 2,000 people took to the streets in dozens of Russian cities to express their support for Navalny and demand his release. While in Moscow the police limited repression interventions to a minimum (around thirty were arrested), 800 arrests were made in St. Petersburg, and about a hundred people spent the night in prison.
Navalny, who was arrested on 17 January at Moscow airport after spending six months in Germany to recover from the consequences of a poisoning for which he has always held President Putin responsible, had started a hunger strike on 31 March to ask for adequate treatment after have experienced severe pain in the back and legs. As the days went by, his condition worsened considerably. “If the hunger strike continues even for a minimum time, unfortunately, we will soon have no patients to treat,” the doctors warned. And Navalny, reluctantly, decided to listen to them.