Navalny doctor says Putin critic ‘could die at any moment’

Physician says imprisoned opposition leader’s health is deteriorating rapidly

Jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny is on hunger strike (AP)

A doctor for the imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who is in the third week of a hunger strike, says that he could be on the verge of death.

Yaroslav Ashikhmin, a physician, said that test results he received from the 44-year-old’s family show that Mr Navalny has elevated levels of potassium, which can bring on cardiac arrest, and heightened creatinine levels that indicate impaired kidneys.

“Our patient could die at any moment,” he said in a Facebook post.

Anastasia Vasilyeva, head of the Navalny-backed Alliance of Doctors, said on Twitter that “action must be taken immediately”.

Mr Navalny is Russian president Vladimir Putin’s most visible and adamant opponent.

His personal physicians have not been allowed to see him in prison. He went on hunger strike to protest the refusal to let them visit when he began experiencing severe back pain and a loss of feeling in his legs.

Russia’s state prison service has said that Mr Navalny is receiving all the medical help he needs.

Mr Navalny was arrested on 17 January when he returned to Russia from Germany, where he had spent five months recovering from nerve-agent poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin.

Russian officials have denied any involvement and even questioned whether he was poisoned, which was confirmed by several European laboratories.

Asked about Mr Navalny‘s worsening condition, US president Joe Biden told reporters: “It’s totally totally unfair and totally inappropriate. On the basis of having the poison and then on a hunger strike.”

Mr Navalny was ordered to serve two-and-a-half years in prison on the grounds that his long recovery in Germany violated a suspended sentence he had been given for a fraud conviction in a case that he says was politically motivated.