MOSCOW (RUSSIA) -A group of medical professionals has warned that hunger-striking Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny is at risk of kidney failure. Navalny’s daughter has called on Russian authorities to allow a doctor to treat her father in prison.
“Allow a doctor to see my dad,” Navalny’s daughter Dasha, a student at Stanford University, wrote on Twitter.
Navalny, a fierce opponent of Russian President Vladimir Putin, started refusing food on March 31 in protest at what he said was the refusal of prison authorities to provide him with proper medical care for acute back and leg pain.
Prison authorities say they have offered Navalny proper medical care but that the 44-year-old opposition politician has refused it and insisted on being treated by a doctor of his choice from outside the facility, a request they have declined.
A medical trade union with ties to Navalny said on Saturday he was in critical condition, citing medical tests that it said showed that Navalny’s kidneys could soon fail, which could lead to cardiac arrest..
In a television interview with the BBC, Russia’s ambassador to Britain, Andrei Kelin said, “He will not be allowed to die in prison, but I can say that Mr. Navalny, he behaves like a hooligan, absolutely,” he said, adding, “His purpose for all of that is to attract attention for him.”
Navalny has said prison authorities are threatening to put him in a straitjacket to force-feed him unless he abandons his hunger strike.