04/18/2021 12:50 PM
Clarín.com
World
Updated 04/18/2021 12:50 PM
The United States warned Russia
of "consequences"
if Russian opposition
Alexey Navalny dies in prison
and Germany said the European Union (EU) foreign ministers will discuss the deteriorating health of the leader, who is on hunger strike.
Earlier, Leonid Volkov, a Russian opposition politician who is Navalny's right-hand man,
called for protests this week
in Moscow and St. Petersburg to demand that he be treated by his doctors and renew his request for his release.
Navalny, 44, the most prominent opponent of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin,
has been in prison since January
, when he returned to Russia after recovering from a poisoning for which he almost died and that, according to him, was orchestrated by Moscow.
Navalny has shown no evidence for his claims,
which the Kremlin rejects.
In an interview with the CNN news network, the US national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, warned that Russia will face "consequences" if Navalny dies in prison.
AFP
"We are seeing a variety of impacts from different measures that we would take, and I am not going to announce them publicly at this time, but we have communicated (to Russia)
that there will be consequences if Navalny dies
," Sullivan said.
In Berlin, the head of German diplomacy announced that the EU foreign ministers will analyze the Navalny case on Monday.
"At their meeting in Brussels, the EU foreign ministers will
discuss the Navalny situation
," Heiko Maas told the German daily Bild.
In addition, he asked the Russian authorities to "urgently" provide "
adequate medical care"
to the opponent, given the "very worrying" deterioration of his health.
Maas also demanded that Navalny
"have access to doctors he trusts,"
adding that "his right to receive medical care must be guaranteed without delay," the AFP news agency reported.
Navalny began his hunger strike protesting the authorities' refusal to
allow him to be visited by his doctor
to examine him for back pain and loss of sensation in his legs.
For his part, in a message on Twitter, the president of the European Parliament, David Sassoli, asked the Russian authorities to give Navalny "immediately the medical assistance he needs and allow him to be treated by a doctor he trusts" out
of "respect for human rights".
The Russian Prison Service said it already has adequate care.
The doctors
On Saturday, a doctor close to Navalny said his family had given him studies showing that the opposition leader
had high levels of potassium
in his blood, which could cause heart failure, and signs of kidney failure.
"Our patient can die at any moment,
" said the doctor, Yaroslav Ashikhmin.
Volkov, co-founder with Navalny of the Russia of the Future party, said today that the demonstrations were called on short notice for next Wednesday because
"his life is at stake."
Volkov called for a protest in Moscow's Manezh Square, just outside the Kremlin walls, and the sprawling Palace Square in St. Petersburg, the AFP news agency reported.
Navalny
was arrested on January 17
when he returned to Russia from Germany, where he had spent five months recovering from nerve agent poisoning that the opponent blamed the Kremlin without evidence.
Russian officials
denied
any involvement in the poisoning from the outset.
With his prolonged stay in Germany, Navalny
violated the probation
that had been granted to him after receiving a suspended sentence of two and a half years in prison for a cause of fraud and money laundering dating back to 2014.
Last February, a Russian court ordered the effective fulfillment of that sentence for having violated probation.
Navalny,
who rejects the charges
and attributes them a political motivation, was sent to serve his sentence in a penal colony in Pokrov, about 100 kilometers east of Moscow.
Source: EFE, AFP and Télam
PB
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