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Doctors not allowed to see Navalny

SEVERAL doctors have been prevented from seeing Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny in a prison hospital after his three-week hunger strike.

Navalny was transferred on Sunday from a penal colony east of Moscow to a prison hospital in Vladimir, after his lawyers and associates said his condition had dramatically worsened.

In a post on his Instagram account, Navalny described a gruelling search that lasted for several hours before his transfer and wryly described his condition.

“You would laugh if you see me now – a skeleton staggers around his cell,” the post read. “They can use me to scare children who refuse to eat: ‘If you don’t eat porridge, you will be like that man with big ears, shaven head and hollow eyes’.”

Navalny added on a serious note that he was glad to hear from his lawyer about the broad sympathy and support for him in Russia and abroad. His lawyer Vadim Kobzev tweeted that Navalny so far has received only one glucose injection since Sunday at the hospital unit, which is intended to treat tuberculosis patients.

Six other attempts to give him a shot failed because paramedics apparently were not qualified enough to find his vein, he added.

“His arms are all blue with the shots,” Kobzev said.

His personal doctor Dr Anastasia Vasilyeva led three other medical experts to try to visit Navalny at the prison clinic and the IK-3 prison in the city of Vladimir.

They were denied entry after waiting for hours outside the gates.

“It’s a show of disrespect and mockery of the doctors,” Vasilyeva tweeted.