Russian opponent Alexei Navalny, imprisoned for two years, is ill and left “without care”, his lawyer Vadim Kobzev said on Tuesday April 11, denouncing a “very strange” situation. The opponent has lost eight kilos in just over two weeks and Kira Yarmich, his spokesperson, wonders today about the nature of the illness from which he suffers. “We do not exclude that at this very moment, Alexei Navalny is slowly being poisoned, killed slowly in order to attract less attention,” she wrote on Twitter. “He is being held in a punishment cell with severe pain and no medical attention,” she said.

“Overnight Friday to Saturday an ambulance was called to his cell due to a worsening stomach condition,” his lawyer wrote on Tuesday. He claimed that Mr. Navalny suffers from “an unknown disease for which no one is treating him”. “According to his medical records, in the last fortnight he has lost 8 kilos,” he added, adding that the packages containing medicines that Mr. Navalny’s mother sent to his son “are sent back to him” , without being able to receive them. According to Kobzev, his client is suffering from “attacks” and he said he “can’t rule out” an attempt by the authorities to let the political opponent’s health “deteriorate, not abruptly, but gradually”. “We will require toxicological and radiological examinations,” he demanded.

A cumulative sentence of eleven and a half years in prison

Alexei Navalny, 46, is being held in the IK-6 penal colony in Melekhovo, 250 km east of Moscow. Lawyer and anti-corruption activist, he has become for a dozen years the main opponent of Russian President Vladimir Putin. He is serving a cumulative sentence of eleven and a half years in prison for violation of his judicial control, fraud and contempt of justice, charges he says were fabricated by the power in place to silence him.

He survived in 2020, during a flight from Siberia to Moscow, an attempted poisoning, using a nerve agent according to Western laboratories. He accused the Russian state of having sought to eliminate him, which the Kremlin denies. Treated for several months in Germany, Alexeï Navalny was arrested in January 2021 upon his voluntary return to Russia, before being sentenced.