Popular Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny could be just days from death following mysterious pains and a hunger strike in a notorious prison, his supporters warned Saturday.
“Alexei is dying … it’s a question of days,” Navalny’s spokesperson, Kira Yarmysh, said on Facebook.
“It’s totally, totally unfair, and totally inappropriate,” President Joe Biden told reporters Saturday when asked about Navalny’s situation.
The head of a doctors alliance posted the results of Navalny’s blood tests on Twitter, saying they indicate kidney damage that could lead to heart failure, Bloomberg reported.
Navalny, 44, returned to his home country in January after he was treated in a German hospital for nerve-agent poisoning, believed by American intelligence to have been carried out by Russia’s Federal Security Service.
Navalny was immediately detained and sentenced to 30 months in the notorious IK-2 prison camp for breaking parole by pursuing medical treatment in Germany. Tens of thousands of Russians protested his imprisonment, leading to the arrest of some 11,000 supporters.
After he began suffering mysterious new leg and back pain behind bars that he feared may have been linked to his poisoning, he went on a hunger strike March 31 in a desperate bid to pressure officials to allow trustworthy medical care from outside the prison system and President Vladimir Putin’s control.
“What else could I do?” he wrote at one point. “I have declared a hunger strike demanding that they allow a visit by an invited doctor in compliance with the law.”
Russian prison officials have insisted that Navalny has received all necessary treatment.
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