Navalny allies detained on eve of planned protests

MOSCOW — Russian police detained allies of jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny on Tuesday and raided two of his regional offices, his supporters said, a day before they planned to stage mass protests over his ailing health.

Navalny, President Vladimir Putin’s staunchest critic, declared a hunger strike on March 31 to demand access to better medical care. He was moved to a prison with a hospital on Sunday. His supporters say they fear for his life.

The 44-year-old opposition politician is now being held in a oneperson cell in the hospital of a maximum-security prison and has been given no treatment beyond a glucose drip, his lawyer, Vadim Kobzev, said after visiting him.

Nurses tried repeatedly to give him another drip on Monday but were unable to find a vein, he said.

“The ‘treatment procedures’ have ended at that. There’s been nothing else, don’t believe a word from any of them,” Kobzev tweeted.

The state prison service has said his condition is satisfactory and that he has agreed to receive “vitamin therapy”. Russian state media has accused Navalny of faking his medical problems to draw attention to his cause.

Navalny, in an Instagram post published by his lawyers, said he looked like a skeleton staggering around in his cell and that he was using a paper court document to swat mosquitoes.

“These wretched squeaking and snapping creatures will end a man faster than any hunger strike,” he joked.