“It was with great concern that we heard the reports of Alexej Navalny’s critical health condition,” deputy government spokeswoman Christiane Hoffmann said in Berlin on Friday. She referred to information that “his condition has deteriorated significantly due to inhumane prison conditions, including prolonged solitary confinement”.
Navalny, 46, is Russia’s most prominent critic of Kremlin boss Vladimir Putin and is being held in a high-security prison outside Moscow. He was sentenced to nine years in prison for embezzlement, which Navalny dismissed as politically motivated.
Worry about Navalny
According to his supporters, Navalny said this week that prison authorities denied him access to hospital treatment. He has flu symptoms with a fever. Navalny’s supporters accused the Kremlin of wanting Putin’s critic to die in prison.
Medical attention and release demanded
The federal government is calling on Russian authorities to provide Navalny with “immediate and full” medical assistance, deputy government spokeswoman Hoffmann said. At the same time, she repeated the demand to “release Navalny immediately”. His detention is based “on a politically motivated sentence” and shows “that the Russian government is using all means to silence dissenters”.
The opposition figure was arrested in Moscow in January 2021 after returning from Germany. He had previously been treated in Berlin for poisoning he contracted in Russia with a neurotoxin from the Novichok group, for which he blames the Kremlin.
When asked if German doctors could travel to Russia to help Navalny, Hoffmann said it was “very difficult at the moment” to even get in touch with the Russian government “on such issues”. However, the federal government is trying to “do what it can”.
(AFP)