Russia Navalny: Poisoned opposition leader held after flying home

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Hunger-striking Navalny transferred to Russian prison hospital
Author of the article:Reuters
Reuters
Anton Zverev
Publishing date:Apr 19, 2021 • 2 hours ago • 4 minute read • Join the conversation
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny attends a hearing to consider an appeal against an earlier court decision to change his suspended sentence to a real prison term, in Moscow, Russia Feb. 20, 2021.
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny attends a hearing to consider an appeal against an earlier court decision to change his suspended sentence to a real prison term, in Moscow, Russia Feb. 20, 2021. PHOTO BY MAXIM SHEMETOV /REUTERS
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VLADIMIR — Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has been transferred to a prison hospital, supporters and officials said on Monday, 20 days into a hunger strike that has led the United States to warn Moscow of serious repercussions if he should die in jail.

Navalny’s lawyer Alexei Liptser said after visiting him in the hospital of penal colony No. 3 in the city of Vladimir, east of Moscow, that his health was deteriorating and he had again been denied access to his own doctors.


“All the symptoms that he had before, they remain the same. Numbness in the arms and legs, back pain – they aren’t going away…The situation is only getting worse,” Liptser told Reuters.

Russia’s prison service said Navalny, 44, was in a “satisfactory” state and he was being given “vitamin therapy” with his consent.

The Kremlin said it did not have information on Navalny’s condition and it was not the role of President Vladimir Putin to monitor the health of prisoners.

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Navalny’s case has further isolated Moscow at a time when U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration has announced tougher economic sanctions and the Czech Republic, a member of NATO and the European Union, has expelled Russian spies, accusing Moscow of a role in deadly 2014 explosions at an arms storage depot.

Liptser said Navalny looked weak and thinner. He said he had been searched for two hours on arrival at the penal colony. “All that naturally has a negative effect on a starving man who already had no strength.”

Navalny ally Leonid Volkov said the transfer had taken place on Sunday, without the politician’s supporters being informed.


Ivan Zhdanov, head of Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, said on Twitter the move “can only be understood to mean Navalny’s condition has worsened, and worsened in such a way that even the torturer admits it.”

The Navalny camp plans mass countrywide demonstrations on Wednesday from Kaliningrad in Russia’s far west to Vladivostok on its Pacific coast.

Russian authorities, who have broken up previous allies and arrested thousands of people, said the planned protests were illegal and warned people not to take to the streets.

PRISON SENTENCE

Navalny, an anti-corruption campaigner who has cataloged the vast wealth accumulated by senior Russian officials he brands “swindlers and thieves,” is serving a 2-1/2 year sentence on old embezzlement charges he calls trumped up.

He was arrested on his return to Russia in January after treatment in Germany for what German authorities say was poisoning in Russia with a banned nerve agent. He and Western governments called this an attempted assassination. The Kremlin denies any blame.

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Navalny went on hunger strike on March 31 to protest against what he said was the refusal of prison authorities to provide him with treatment for leg and back pain. Russia says he has been treated well and is exaggerating illness to gain attention.


The United States imposed new sanctions on Russia last Thursday over alleged malign actions, denied by Moscow, including interference in last year’s presidential election, cyberhacking, and bullying of neighboring Ukraine.

Russia replied with sanctions of its own a day later.

U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said on Sunday that Washington had told Moscow “there will be consequences” if Navalny dies in prison, but did not mention specifics.

The Kremlin said on Monday it would retaliate for any further sanctions and rejected foreign countries’ statements on the Navalny case. “The state of health of those convicted and jailed on Russian territory cannot and should not be a theme of their interest,” spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

BIDEN DIPLOMACY

Moscow has largely shrugged off international pressure since becoming a pariah to the West in 2014 when it seized Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula and backed an insurgency in eastern Ukraine.

But the arrival of a new administration in Washington in January could change the calculus if Biden presses ahead with tougher sanctions than under former President Donald Trump.

Although Russia-U.S. relations are at a post-Cold War low, the two sides are still talking.

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National security adviser Sullivan and his Russian counterpart Nikolai Patrushev spoke by phone on Monday, touching on the possibility of a summit that Biden has proposed to Putin. The Kremlin said Putin would take part in a separate online climate summit that Biden is hosting on Thursday.

Moscow expelled 20 Czech diplomats on Sunday in retaliation for the Czech Republic kicking out 18 Russians, after Prague accused Russia of a role in the arms depot blasts. The Czech Republic said on Monday Moscow’s decision to expel more Czechs than the number of Russians expelled by Prague was unexpected, and it called for a show of support from European allies.

The arms depot explosions in October and December 2014 came as NATO considered transferring Czech arms to Ukraine to help it fight Russian-backed separatists. Two people were found dead at the depot after the initial blast.

Prague said it had learned that two Russian agents, later accused by Britain of poisoning a former Russian spy in England, were in the Czech Republic at the time of the blasts. The Kremlin has denied any role.
 

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Hunger-striking Navalny cracks 'skeleton' jokes on Instagram
Author of the article:Reuters
Reuters
Publishing date:Apr 20, 2021 • 4 hours ago • 2 minute read • Join the conversation
Doctors of jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny Vsevolod Shurkhai, Yaroslav Ashikhmin, Anastasiya Vasilyeva and Alexei Erlikh speak to the media outside the IK-3 penal colony, which houses a hospital where Navalny was reportedly transferred, in Vladimir, Russia April 20, 2021.
Doctors of jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny Vsevolod Shurkhai, Yaroslav Ashikhmin, Anastasiya Vasilyeva and Alexei Erlikh speak to the media outside the IK-3 penal colony, which houses a hospital where Navalny was reportedly transferred, in Vladimir, Russia April 20, 2021. PHOTO BY TATYANA MAKEYEVA /REUTERS
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MOSCOW — Three weeks into a hunger strike that threatens to kill him, Alexei Navalny made light of his skeletal state in a darkly humorous social media post on Tuesday, and said he was grateful for support from Russia and around the world.

The Russian opposition leader was transferred on Sunday to a prison hospital in Vladimir, east of Moscow, after starving himself since March 31 in protest at the refusal of authorities to grant him access to his own doctors.


In a post on Instagram, he told his supporters they would laugh if they could see him staggering round his cell and trying to swat mosquitoes with a rolled-up tube of paper.

“You’d laugh if you could see me now. A skeleton staggering round his cell,” the 44-year-old said. “Now they really could use me to scare children who refuse to eat.”


Navalny has been a thorn in the side of President Vladimir Putin for the past decade, wielding satire and humor to expose allegations of official corruption and building up a huge online following.

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He maintained a stream of witty jibes against the Kremlin even while recovering last year from being poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent in Siberia.

His supporters say he has numbness in his arms and legs, sharp pain in his back and dangerously elevated potassium levels, putting him at risk of kidney failure and cardiac arrest.

“I laughed when I read quotes from the luminaries of medicine that with such a level of potassium as in my samples, I should either be in intensive care or in a coffin. Well, no, it’s not that simple to get rid of me. After Novichok, potassium’s not so terrible,” Navalny said.


He did not refer directly to his allies’ calls for mass protests across Russia on Wednesday, but said his spirits had been lifted by a fleeting visit from a lawyer on Monday who told him about the level of support for him in Russia and abroad.

“There are a lot of people like me who have nothing but a mug of water, hope and faith in their convictions,” Navalny said. “It is extremely important for them to feel your support and solidarity… There is no better weapon against injustice and lawlessness.”
 

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Jailed Kremlin critic Navalny starts ending his hunger strike
Author of the article:Reuters
Reuters
Andrew Osborn and Tom Balmforth
Publishing date:Apr 23, 2021 • 11 hours ago • 2 minute read • Join the conversation
In this file photo taken on June 24, 2019 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny attends a hearing at a court in Moscow.
In this file photo taken on June 24, 2019 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny attends a hearing at a court in Moscow. PHOTO BY VASILY MAXIMOV /AFP via Getty Images
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MOSCOW — Jailed Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny said on Friday he would begin gradually ending a hunger strike he had called to demand proper medical care, suggesting that support inside Russia and the West had got him much of what he needed.

Navalny announced an end to his hunger strike on its 24th day after a medical trade union that supports him and which has treated him in the past appealed to him to start eating again or risk death.


The worsening health of Navalny, President Vladimir Putin’s most prominent domestic opponent, and the authorities’ initial failure to give him the treatment he demanded had triggered a Western diplomatic offensive designed to cajole Moscow to make concessions.

In an Instagram post arranged via his lawyers on Friday, the 44-year-old opposition politician said he was still demanding that he be seen by a doctor of his own choosing and that he was losing feeling in parts of his legs and arms.

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He said, however, that he had been twice seen by civilian doctors and undergone tests. He added it would take him 24 days to gradually end the hunger strike and thanked the “good people” in Russia and around the world for their support.

“Thank you – I have now been examined twice by a panel of civilian doctors… They are doing tests and analyzes and giving me the results and conclusions,” he wrote.

“I am not withdrawing my request to allow the necessary doctor to see me – I am losing feeling in areas of my arms and legs, and I want to understand what it is and how to treat it, but considering the progress and all the circumstances, I am beginning to come out of the hunger strike,” he wrote.

Navalny launched his hunger strike on March 31 after saying that prison authorities had refused him access to a doctor of his choosing despite his complaints of acute back and leg pain.


Authorities in the IK-2 correctional facility some 100 km (60 miles) east of Moscow where Navalny is serving out a 2-1/2 year sentence for a conviction he and his supporters say is politically motivated said they had offered him prison medical care but that he had refused.

His supporters said he had refused it because it was substandard and, in some cases, outdated and dangerous.

Thousands of Navalny’s supporters protested in cities across Russia on Wednesday to demand he get proper care and be freed and the United States had warned Moscow it would face “consequences” if he died in jail.

Navalny survived a poison attack with a nerve agent last year, which Russia denied carrying out.