Navalni is back in the cell with signs of illness

Lawyer, anti-corruption activist and main opponent of the Kremlin, Alexei Navalny, currently serving a prison sentence in a “strict regime” prison in the Vladimir region near Moscow, could be gradually “poisoned” by prison staff. At least that’s what Kira Yarmish, the press liaison officer who is now in exile in Germany along with most of Navalny’s team, believes.

In a video on Twitter, Yarmish says the opponent is “locked in solitary confinement and in severe pain. He has no medical care. according to his story“He lost eight kilograms in just over two weeks” for a “mysterious” disease.

All this, the activist believes, suggests that she could be a victim of “slow poisoning” due to which she would disappear from the scene in order to “stop attracting attention” to the public at a particularly difficult time due to the war in Ukraine, the numerous casualties suffered by the army and the efforts authorities to mobilize as many young people as possible to be sent to the front. “Last Friday night an ambulance had to be called when he suffered severe abdominal pain,” Yarmish said.

It is already the thirteenth time that Navalni, who is 46 years old imprisoned in a penal cell or “penal isolation” (Shizo), after the name of the Russian prison system.

As he himself announced on his Twitter, the main Russian dissident ended his previous imprisonment in Shizu on April 7, and on Monday the 10th he was already sent there again for 15 days. Yarmish then assured that they further limited his time to write letters and forbade him to buy food in the prison canteen.

Reasons for being locked up in a punishment cell can be anything from inappropriate clothing to not responding quickly enough to a guard’s request. After undergoing pretrial detention in Moscow and a penal colony in the Vladimir region, Navalny was transferred to the “strict regime” prison in Melekhov, also in Vladimir, last June.

During all that time, he was on Shizo 13 times, which is a total of, according to Yarmish, almost five months, “143 days”. On Tuesday, his lawyer Vadim Kóbzev already announced that the opposition leader is living in a “very strange situation” in prison and condemned it “He suffers from an unknown disease and no one takes care of him”. In his opinion, they allow “his health to progressively deteriorate”.

new accusations

Just this Thursday, Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB, formerly KGB) again linked people abroad close to Navalny to the murder, the second in St. Petersburg, of Russian ultra-nationalist blogger Vladlen Tatarsky. Daria Trépova, the 26-year-old girl who gave Tatarsky her bust with a hidden bomb, according to the FSB, was influenced by two of Navalny’s close associates, Leonid Volkov and Ivan Zhdanov. Although the bomb was delivered to him by a certain Yuri Denisov, an alleged agent of the Ukrainian secret services.

Ždanov, who headed the now-disbanded Anti-Corruption Fund (FBK), said on Thursday via Telegram that “they want to accuse Naval of terrorism in order to sentence him to an even harsher sentence.” He denied any involvement in Tatarsky’s death and accused Russian secret services of being the authentic organizers of the attack on the ultra-nationalist blogger.

In March of last year, Navalny was sentenced for “fraud and disparagement” to nine years in prison and a fine of 1.2 million rubles, then about 20,000 euros) for crimes for which he is considered innocent even in the proceedings. which he described as “set up”. After recovering from poisoning in Germany in August 2020 in Omsk (Siberia), the opposition leader returned to Moscow on January 17, 2021 and was arrested as soon as he stepped into the airport.

It turned out that in 2014 he and his brother were found guilty of “fraud and money laundering” in a case related to the French company Yves Rocher. They were sentenced to three and a half years in prison. That sentence was suspended, but in February 2021, a Moscow court decided to lift the suspension and send Navalny to prison. German experts determined that the opposition leader was poisoned in Omsk with a nerve agent from the Novichok group of substances.