Navalni starts a hunger strike in prison to demand medical attention

The opposition Alexei Navalni, at the Moscow Municipal Court, on February 20. MAXIM SHEMETOV / Reuters

Alexei Navalni, the fiercest critic against Russian President Vladimir Putin, has started a hunger strike in prison.

The prominent opponent, convicted last February in a controversial old case, demands that the authorities provide him with adequate health care.

Navalni recovered in Germany from a serious poisoning suffered last August in Siberia of which he directly accuses the Kremlin, and has said that he suffers from severe back pain and that the numbness that he began to suffer in one leg has already spread to two .

That makes him have doubts about the causes of his ailment, he says in a letter to the director of the prison this Wednesday, in which it is read between the lines that he may fear that he is being poisoned again.

The opponent accuses the authorities of contributing to the deterioration of his health by subjecting him to the “torture” of sleep deprivation: the prison guards wake him up every hour to verify that he has not fled, since it is considered a risk case of escape, although he voluntarily returned to Moscow from Berlin in January and despite knowing that in all probability he would be arrested and prosecuted.

Navalni suspects the worsening of his physical problems, and recalls that last summer he suffered a very serious attack with a neurotoxin for military use.

A substance that German, French, Swedish and Organization for Chemical Weapons Control (OPEQ) researchers later identified as belonging to the Novichok family, designed in the former Soviet Union and the same that Russian intelligence used against former Russian spy Sergei Skripal on British soil in 2018, according to the UK.

“Considering that FSB officers [the state intelligence service, heir to the KGB] recently tried to kill me with chemical weapons, but that state medicine declared it a metabolic disorder, I am tormented by doubts about the causes of my illness and the prospects recovery ”, he says in his letter to the director of the Pokrov penal colony, published on his Instagram account by his team.

• Navalni denounces that his health has deteriorated after suffering "abuse" in prison

• The Kremlin justifies Navalni's sleep deprivation as part of "discipline" in jail

The Kremlin, singled out by the European Union and the United States for the poisoning of Navalni - they highlight that Russian intelligence agents followed and watched the opponent - denies any role in the attack last summer.

President Putin's spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, also pointed out a few days ago that the measure of waking Navalni every hour to verify his condition and resulting in sleep deprivation that the opponent considers torture, is a normal measure of discipline and control of the penal colony.

In a small comment on the social network, which shows once again that it is difficult to stifle the voice of the opposition, Navalni explains that he had no choice but to protest by depriving himself of food (in Russia there is a difference between the "hunger strike", in the one that can drink water, and "dry hunger strike", which involves total deprivation).

"Why are the prisoners on hunger strike?"

“This question only worries those who were not prisoners.

Everything looks complicated from the outside.

But, from the inside, everything is simple: you have no other methods of struggle ”, says the activist, who demands a visit from a doctor outside the prison and who claims to fear that the leg problems will get so bad that they will have to amputate them.

He can barely walk, he says.

"Now I am lying here, hungry, but still with two legs," he says from the IK-2 penal colony in the Vladimir region (about 100 kilometers from Moscow).

The Federal Penitentiary Service in the Vladimir region, which last week evaluated the opponent's status as "stable, satisfactory", assures that the opponent has received the necessary medical assistance, denies that Navalni is being deliberately deprived of sleep and remarks that the supervision of the convicted is done in accordance with the law and applies "to all the convicted", according to a note collected by the Interfax agency.

Also the vice president of the Public Monitoring Commission of the same region, Vladimir Grigoryan, has denied any mistreatment and has said that the opponent is "simulating" health problems.

Navalni, 44, has repeatedly complained that the prison authorities have given him only basic pain relievers and an ointment for his back and legs, and that they have refused to accept the medications that his doctor had previously prescribed.

The opponent was in a coma for more than 20 days after the poisoning and was treated in a Berlin hospital.

He had to spend several months doing rehabilitation treatments to walk again.

His neurological symptoms, he has told in several interviews, were very harsh.

The case of Alexéi Navalni, who was convicted last February for failing to comply with the conditional release (for being in Germany) of an old sentence for fraud that the European Court of Human Rights already considered arbitrary and unfair in 2017, has further strained relations between Russia and the West.

The opponent, held in a penal colony considered one of the most severe in the country and known for subjecting prisoners to psychological isolation, will have to serve two years and eight months in prison.

Now, the start of the Navalni hunger strike is another element of escalation and could reactivate the mobilizations in support of the activist, which in January led to the largest protests in Russia in a decade and ended with harsh repression by the authorities.

On Tuesday night, in a video call with Putin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron pointed out the need for Russia to protect the health of the prominent opponent and respect his rights, according to the French statement.

The Kremlin, which usually avoids at all costs mentioning the anti-corruption activist Navalni and even writing his name, assures in its note about the call - in which various topics were discussed, from the Sputik V vaccine, to the situation in Ukraine, Belarus or Syria - that the Russian leader offered his counterparts an “objective explanation” about “A.

Navalni ”.