Concerns grow over Navalny’s mystery illness

● Spokesperson of Russian opposition politician fears he is being slowly poisoned in prison

Alexei Navalny, Russia’s most prominent opposition politician, is grappling with a mystery ailment in jail that could be some sort of slow acting poison, and has lost 8kg in weight in just over two weeks, his spokesperson said.

An ambulance was called for Navalny overnight on Friday to Saturday to the maximum-security IK-6 penal colony at Melekhovo, about 250km east of Moscow, where he was being held, Kira Yarmysh, his spokesperson, said in a video clip on Twitter accompanied by disturbing background music.

She said an unknown stomach complaint had flared up on Friday and that prison doctors had treated him in the past by injecting him with medicine which they had refused to identify.

“We do not rule out that at this very time Alexei Navalny is being slowly poisoned, being killed slowly so that it attracts less attention,” Yarmysh said in the Twitter post.

“He is being held in a punishment cell with acute pain without medical help.”

There was no immediate comment from Russia’s federal penitentiary service which has in the past denied allegations its employees have mistreated Navalny and have said he has always been afforded medical treatment when needed.

Navalny, who is serving combined sentences of 11½ years for fraud and contempt of court on charges he says were trumped up to silence him, said via Twitter on Tuesday that he had been moved back into solitary confinement and forced to endure “extremely hellish” conditions.

Yarmysh said he had suffered similar stomach pain in January after being treated with antibiotics for a virus and had again lost a lot of weight.

The German government said on Wednesday it was worried about Navalny’s worsening condition.

Navalny is a former lawyer who rose to prominence more than a decade ago by lampooning President Vladimir Putin’s elite and voicing allegations of corruption on a vast scale.

Navalny’s supporters cast him as a Russian version of SA’s Nelson Mandela who will one day be freed from jail to lead the country.

Conversely, Russian authorities view him and his supporters as extremists with links to the US CIA intelligence agency intent on trying to destabilise Russia.

They have outlawed his movement, forcing many of his followers to flee abroad.

In 2020, Navalny survived an apparent attempt to poison him during a flight in Siberia, with what Western laboratory tests determined was a nerve agent.

Navalny accused the Russian state of trying to kill him, something it denied.

He was treated for that poisoning in Germany but voluntarily returned to Russia in 2021, where he was arrested on arrival and jailed.

Yarmysh said medicine sent to Navalny’s prison by his mother was not collected by prison officials from the post office and was returned.

His supporters had to battle with the prison authorities every time he fell ill to ensure he received some kind of treatment, she said.

“Abusing Alexei’s health is a regular practice of [prison] colony number six.

“All we can do right now [to help him] is to talk about Alexei everywhere,” Yarmysh said.