Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is “seriously ill” in the penal colony where he has been locked up and was recently taken to the sick ward of the prison to be treated for a respiratory illness, it was reported on Tuesday. .
Longtime critic Vladimir Putin, who had already been struggling with his health, said in a note Monday that he was coughing and had a fever of 100.6F, The Guardian reported.
According to reports, Navalny has been tested for COVID-19, but it is unclear whether the results have returned or whether it has tested positive.
However, several prisoners in his department had already been treated for tuberculosis, the oppositionist said.
Olga Mikhailova, a lawyer for Navalny, told Moscow radio station Echo that a member of Navalny’s legal team visited him on Tuesday and was “in a pretty bad state.”
“He has lost a lot of weight, in addition to having a strong cough and a temperature of [100.6F]”, Said Mikhailova.
“This man is seriously ill. It is a total outrage that the IK-2 [prison] it has led him to this condition ”.
Navalny, 44, is serving a two-and-a-half-year sentence for embezzlement charges that human rights defenders have deemed outdated and politically motivated and the result of Putin’s lawyer’s attacks.
He was arrested in January after returning from Germany, where he was twice poisoned with a Soviet-era nerve agent.
Last week, Navalny declared a hunger strike when prison officials refused to let him see a personal physician to help him treat pain and numbness in his back and legs, which which made it difficult for him to walk.
He has previously described the prison as a “true concentration camp”.
On Tuesday, several supporters who went to jail to protest the lack of medical care were arrested by Russian police, including Anastasia Vasilyeva, head of the Alliance of Physicians of Russia, and three other members of the group.
Reporters from CNN and Belsat, a Polish television station, were also arrested, The Guardian reported.
“We came here today to offer help,” Vasilyeva told reporters before being stabbed. “There is no war here. We solve this problem like people. “
Navalny’s wife, Yulia, published a letter sent by the prison director on Tuesday explaining that her husband could not be sent to a hospital because he did not have a passport.
In addition, she claimed the guard mocked her grilled chicken husband and handed out sweets to fellow prisoners, while Navalny kept on the hunger strike.
