Imprisoned Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny's health has deteriorated dramatically following what a senior aide called the suspicious "treatment" he was given by prison medical personnel for acute stomach pains the politician suffered while in punitive solitary confinement.
In a video statement on Twitter, Navalny spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh said that. on April 7, an ambulance was called late at night to the labor camp where the Kremlin critic is imprisoned because he experienced excruciating stomach pains after he lost eight kilograms while serving 15 days in a punitive cell.
"There is no medical treatment provided to him. All medicine that his mom sends him by mail, the [prison] authorities do not accept them and the parcels go back to the sender," she said.
"Every time we have to fight to make sure that some sort of medical assistance is provided for him, while the prison’s medical personnel inject unknown substances into his body, and refuse to tell us what these substances are," Yarmysh added, noting "we cannot rule out that now, as we talk, Aleksei is being slowly poisoned, slowly killed to avoid the public’s attention."
Fears over Navalny's health have been heightened in recent months as prison officials have placed him in solitary confinement for even minor infractions. The jailed opposition leader has spent more than100 days in punitive solitary confinement since August 2022.
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5 Things To Know About Russian Opposition Leader Aleksei Navalny
Most recently, Navalny was put back in a punitive solitary cell for another 15 days on April 11, just three days after a previous stint had ended.
Navalny's lawyer Vadim Kobzev has warned that a prison guard had informed Navalny about a "provocation" involving a cellmate was being prepared against him and that Navalny’s defense team had informed Russian Ombudswoman Tatyana Moskalkova about the possibility.
Navalny, who suffered a near-fatal poisoning in August 2020 that he blames on Russian security operatives acting at the behest of President Vladimir Putin, was arrested on January 17, 2021, and later handed a 2 1/2-year prison sentence for violating the terms of an earlier parole during his convalescence abroad. The Kremlin has denied any involvement in Navalny's poisoning.
The original conviction is widely regarded as a trumped-up, politically motivated case.
Then in March last year, Navalny was handed a nine-year prison term on charges of contempt and embezzlement through fraud that he and his supporters have repeatedly rejected as politically motivated.