The daughter of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, who is on hunger strike, yesterday called on Russian authorities to allow a doctor to treat her father in prison, a day after a group of medical professionals warned that he is at risk of dying “at any minute.”
Navalny, a fierce opponent of Russian President Vladimir Putin, started refusing food on March 31 in protest to what he said was the refusal of prison authorities to provide him with proper medical care for acute back and leg pain.
Prison authorities say they have offered Navalny proper medical care, but that the 44-year-old has refused it and insisted on being treated by a doctor of his choice from outside the facility, a request they have declined.
Photo: AP
“Allow a doctor to see my dad,” Navalny’s daughter Daria Navalnaya, a student at Stanford University, wrote on Twitter.
Navalny’s personal doctor Anastasia Vasilyeva and three more doctors, including cardiologist Yaroslav Ashikhmin, have asked prison officials to grant them immediate access to him.
“Our patient can die any minute,” Ashikhmin said on Facebook on Saturday.
Ashikhmin said that test results he received from Navalny’s family show that he has sharply elevated levels of potassium, which can bring on cardiac arrest, and heightened creatinine levels that indicate impaired kidneys.
He said that Navalny should be moved to intensive care.
Navalny barely survived a poisoning with the Novichok nerve agent in August last year. His doctors say his hunger strike might have exacerbated his condition.
Navalny’s aides yesterday called on Russians to hit the streets to help save his life.
“It’s to time to act. We are talking not just about Navalny’s freedom but his life,” Leonid Volkov said on Facebook as he urged Russians to turn out on Wednesday night, hours after Putin is to deliver his state-of-the-nation address.
Additional reporting by AP
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