Several doctors including the personal doctor of the Russian opponent on hunger strike, Alexeï Navalny, were turned away Tuesday morning April 20 at the entrance to the penal colony where he was hospitalized the day before.
Read also: Russian prison authorities have decided to transfer Alexei Navalny to hospital
The anti-corruption activist, who stopped eating three weeks ago, arrived Monday in a hospital prison unit in Vladimir, a large city northeast of Moscow. His relatives and the doctors treating him have said since this weekend that he risks dying at any time. Anastasia Vassilieva, Alexeï Navalny's personal doctor and leader of an opposition union, said she was unable to meet her patient on Tuesday, as every time she has tried to meet him since his imprisonment in early March.
"
It's a kind of very disrespectful attitude for people who had just come to exercise their human duty, the medical duty to help a patient,
" she told AFP in front of the colony, adding that he was about the "
health and life
" of the 44-year-old lawyer. However, Alexeï Navalny's lawyers were able to return to the colony, according to AFP journalists. Alexeï Navalny stopped eating on March 31 to protest against his conditions of detention, accusing the prison administration of refusing him a visit from a doctor when he suffers from a double herniated disc and loss of sensitivity to the legs and arms.
The number one enemy of the Kremlin was arrested in January, as soon as he returned to Russia after five months of convalescence in Germany for a poisoning for which he personally accuses Vladimir Putin.
He was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for a fraud case dating back to 2014, which is generally considered politically motivated.
Brussels and Washington worried
The Russian prison services assured Monday that the state of health of Alexey Navalny was "
satisfactory
", an announcement immediately questioned by his relatives and by the European Union. An ally of the opponent, Leonid Volkov, considered that he had been transferred "
to a concentration and torture camp and not to a hospital
". The NGO Amnesty International considered that this transfer was "
a punishment disguised as medical treatment
", because the authorities were preparing "
to force-feed him to break his hunger strike and punish him again.
".
The fate of the opponent, and more generally relations between Brussels and Moscow, was on the program of a meeting of foreign ministers on Monday, while Western countries raised their tone against Moscow.
Read also: Fears for the health of Alexey Navalny: Europeans and Americans increase the pressure on Moscow
EU chief diplomat Josep Borrell thus made the Russian authorities "
responsible
" for his health, as did later British foreign minister Dominic Raab. For its part, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) sent questions to Moscow on the conditions of detention of the anti-corruption activist, worrying to know if they were "
compatible with his right to life
”. Right in its boots, Moscow continues to denounce Western criticism as interference.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said these criticisms "
could not be accepted
". Supporters of the 44-year-old opponent also called for protests across Russia on Wednesday, the day of Vladimir Putin's annual address to Parliament. The Interior Ministry warned that it would not allow any “
destabilization
” and that it would take “
all the necessary measures
”. The prosecution wants him to ban the movement of Alexeï Navalny, the Fund for the fight against corruption (FBK), for "
extremism
". Doctors close to the opponent had said on Saturday that they feared he would go into cardiac arrest "
from one minute to the next
",deeming "
critical
»The level of potassium in his blood.
