A Russian police officer patrols outside the penal colony with Alexey Navalny.
Photographer: Kirill Kudryavstev / AFP / Getty Images
Photographer: Kirill Kudryavstev / AFP / Getty Images
Russian authorities decided to transfer opposition leader Alexey Navalny to a prison hospital after the Allies warned that his health was failing amid a hunger strike and that the US had threatened the Kremlin with ” consequences “not specified if he dies.
Navalny is in “satisfactory condition,” the local delegation of the Federal Penitentiary Service said Monday in a statement on the website. He agreed to “vitamin therapy” and receives daily exams from a doctor, he said.
The transfer means Navalny’s state “has gotten so much worse that even the torture chamber admitThat’s right, “Ivan Zhdanov, head of the activist’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, wrote on Twitter.
The 44-year-old state has become the latest hotbed of growing tensions between Russia and the West. The United States and Europe are pressuring President Vladimir Putin to ensure proper medical care for Navalny, who began a hunger strike in prison on March 31 to demand access to his personal doctors for acute pain in the back and legs. Supporters of the opposition leader called for protests across Russia on Sunday, April 21, the day Putin will deliver his annual speech on the state of the nation, after warning that the Kremlin’s most outspoken critic may be alone days since death.
SEE: The U.S. warns there will be “consequences” if Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny dies in prison.
Dawn: Europe ”. (Source: Bloomberg)
Amid fears of more potential sanctions, the ruble was trading 0.4% weaker against the dollar as of 12:13 p.m. in Moscow, the worst performance in emerging markets after the Indian rupee.
“We’re seeing a variety of different costs that we would impose, and I’m not going to telegraph it publicly right now,” U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. . “But we have communicated that there will be consequences if Mr. Navalny dies.”
Russia responded defiantly after comments.
“It is obvious that the development of Russia as a strong and sovereign state has no interest” for the West, Vyacheslav Volodin, chairman of the lower house of parliament and a close ally of President Vladimir Putin, told Telegram on Monday. Russia should prepare for measures aimed at its vital energy sector and its industry, he said.
The Penitentiary Service said a medical commission had made the decision to transfer Navalny to the IK-3 high-security prison hospital in the city of Vladimir, about 190 kilometers (118 miles) from Moscow, “specialized in the dynamic observation of these patients “. It did not specify whether the transfer had already occurred.
Navalny has been imprisoned since March 11 in another camp in the area for violating parole rules while recovering in Germany from a near-fatal poisoning in Siberia that he and Western governments blame on the Kremlin. Russian authorities deny any involvement.
Alexey Navalny is in a cage during a defamation hearing in Babuskinsky district court in Moscow, Russia, on February 12.
Source: Babuskinsky district court
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called for the “immediate and unconditional release” of the prisoner. De Navalny Fate is in Putin’s hands, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said on Sunday, while German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas told the Bild newspaper that Berlin demands “urgently “to receive adequate medical care.
Anastasia Vasilieva, who leads the Alliance of Physicians union with Navalny’s support, posted a copy of the results of her blood tests showing what she said were “critical” levels of potassium. “This means kidney failure, which can cause a severe disruption of the heartbeat at any time,” including the possibility of heart failure, he told Twitter. He wrote Monday that the IK-3 prison hospital to which he was transferred is not qualified to treat him.
In a post on his Instagram account on Friday, Navalny’s allies reported that a prison official had warned him that a blood test indicated a “serious deterioration” in his health and that he would be force-fed if the protest did not end.
American sanctions
President Joe Biden on Thursday ordered a series of new sanctions against Russia, including restrictions on the purchase of new sovereign debt, in response to allegations that Moscow was behind an attack on SolarWinds Corp. and interfered in last year’s U.S. election.
Still, the moves were calibrated to punish the Kremlin for past behaviors, preventing relations from deteriorating further, especially as tensions escalate due to a Russian military buildup near Ukraine. Biden has offered to meet Putin later this year, an invitation Russia said he responded to “positively.”
Asked about Navalny’s condition on Saturday, Biden told reporters, “It’s totally unfair.”
Putin, the poison and the importance of Alexey Navalny: QuickTake
Biden put pressure on Putin in a phone call on Tuesday about the poisoning of the opposition leader, which U.S. intelligence has publicly accused of the Russian Federal Security Service. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron also questioned Putin about Navalny in a March 30 phone call.
Macron asked “clear red lines “in dealing with Russia in an interview with CBS’s Face the Nation broadcast on Sunday.” It’s a failure of our collective credibility with Russia, “he said.