Navalny’s doctors urge him to call off hunger strike

MOSCOW: Alexei Navalny’s personal doctors on Thursday urged him to ‘immediately’ call off his hunger strike as the jailed Kremlin critic said he was full of ‘pride and hope’ after nationwide protests.

Thousands of Russians took to the streets in dozens of cities across the country on Wednesday evening, after the West warned the Kremlin that it would face ‘consequences’ in the event of Navalny’s death.

President Vladimir Putin’s best-known critic barely survived a poisoning with the Novichok nerve agent in August, and his health has been failing since he declared a hunger strike on March 31 to demand proper medical care for a range of ailments, including back pain and numbness in his limbs.

On Thursday, his private doctors — who have been unable to examine their patient in his prison colony — said they were asking Navalny to ‘immediately halt the hunger strike to preserve your life and health’.

“If the hunger strike continues even a little longer, we will simply have no one to treat soon,” cardiologist Yaroslav Ashikhmin and four other doctors said in a statement published by Mediazona, an independent news website.

The physicians said it was thanks to ‘huge’ public support that Navalny was on Tuesday taken to a civilian hospital in the central city of Vladimir and received access to ‘something that looks like an independent examination’.

The doctors added that they had received the results of Navalny’s health assessment and his medical tests earlier Thursday and would inform the opposition figure of their opinion the following day.

Navalny’s right-hand man Leonid Volkov said the 44year-old’s doctors had received information about his health only because the Russian authorities responded to public pressure.

“It is very sad that one has to refuse food for 23 days to achieve such a result,” Volkov said.

Last weekend Navalny’s doctors said he could die at ‘any minute’, pointing to the opposition politician’s high potassium levels.

Navalny himself said in an Instagram post that he was full of ‘pride and hope’ a day after protesters rallied in support, calling them the future of Russia.

“Yesterday you walked together with me, and today I will be lying on my cot and imagining myself walking with you and for you,” he said.

Thousands of people had marched through central Moscow near the Kremlin chanting ‘Freedom’ and ‘Putin is a thief!’, just hours after the president delivered his annual state of the nation address.