“We really believe it’s days. If not hours.” The personal physician of Alexei Navalny, Anastasija Vasilyeva, is increasingly pessimistic about the health conditions of the Russian opponent who on March 31 announced a hunger strike in prison. While Western pressure increases on Moscow, with appeals for release from both sides of the Atlantic, the doctor, combative as she is, does not stop harassing the authorities to allow her to visit her most illustrious patient in the cell. “Every detainee has the right to be examined by his own doctor”, he insists. When the police broke into his home last January, he started playing a Beethoven sonata on the piano. After his house arrest at the end of February, he organized a protest in front of the Ik-2 penal colony in Pokrov, where the dissident is serving two and a half years in prison, to be immediately stopped by the police. It is now under a regime of restrictions, including a ban on using the telephone and the Internet. He can’t answer calls, but he replies to our questions about the Telegram encrypted messaging app via the spokesperson Aleksandra Zakharova.
Last August, as soon as she learned of Navalny’s Novichok nerve agent poisoning, Vasilyeva flew to Omsk with the activist’s wife. Julia Navalnaya and had clashed with the silence of the hospital authorities. “Today, as then, the impression is that the structures are not autonomous in making decisions. They await instructions from the top. And what the prison administration does does not seem to be for Aleksej’s benefit.”
Russia, “Navalny is dying”. After the alarm, Biden intervenes
by Rosalba Castelletti
But in August, after a grueling tug-of-war, Russian President Vladimir Putin finally gave the go-ahead for Navalny to move to Germany where he was miraculously healed. This time the appeals for release or, at least, for adequate treatment seem to fall on deaf ears. Including the last open letter to the prison authorities signed Saturday by Vasilyeva and three other doctors. Or the heartfelt prayer of Navalny’s daughter Dasha: “Let a doctor visit my father.” As well as the invitations from the European Union and the United States. With the EU High Representative for foreign policy Josep Borrell who asked for “immediate access to trusted doctors” and the “immediate and unconditional release” of the opponent in prison. And the Farnesina which expressed “strong concern” on the eve of a meeting of EU ministers that could lead to new sanctions. The world powers, the French president said Emmanuel Macron a Cbs, they must draw “red lines” with Moscow. And the US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan he warned that there will be “consequences” for Moscow if Navalny “dies”.
Interviewed by Bbc, the Russian ambassador in London Andrei Kelin has assured that Moscow will not let him “die in prison”, but has also accused him of “wanting to attract attention”. “Today his leg hurts, tomorrow his arm. Nobody else in his prison complains like that,” he said. And when asked why Navalny is not allowed to see his doctor, he replied: “In the UK, prisoners ask to see their personal doctors?”.
Affirmations that have not reassured the activist’s collaborators who have called “the largest demonstration in history” for April 21, the same day as Putin’s annual speech to Parliament: “There is no more time, it is time to act. It is no longer just about Navalny’s freedom, but about his life, “he wrote Leonid Volkov, his right-hand man at the Anti-Corruption Foundation, which risks being declared an “extremist” and being banned.
Navalnyj, Vasilyeva confirms, “is getting worse and worse. The poisoning considerably aggravates his health conditions. Also because he did not finish his rehabilitation when he was arrested” on his return to Russia last January. In prison, Navalny complained of back pain, numbness of the limbs and fever and, when he was not allowed to be seen by a trusted doctor, he went on hunger strike.
Russia, the opponent Navalnyj announces a hunger strike in prison
by Rosalba Castelletti
“His could be the symptoms of a toxic neuropathy that could be a consequence of poisoning and insufficient nutrition. Not only and not so much the last few weeks of the hunger strike, but the poor diet in the penal colony, sleep deprivation and From what his wife Julija, the last to have met him, told us, Alexei is as lively and cheerful as ever. But he hardly speaks and has lost a lot of weight, even compared to the end of September when he came out of his coma: tall 1.90 meters, now weighs 76 kilos.
To worry – he continues – are above all the latest blood tests of the dissident: “They show that there could be progressive renal failure. A patient with such a high potassium level, 7.1 millimoles per liter, should be treated in the intensive care unit because a fatal arrhythmia could develop at any time. ” And he concludes: “The care of the penitentiary service is insufficient and dangerous. There is a fatal risk that Navalnyj will lose control of his body”.
.