Jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny is suffering a mystery stomach illness and has lost nearly 18 pounds in just two weeks, prompting concern that he is being slowly poisoned to death behind bars.
Anna Veduta, a vice president of Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, who is also based in Washington D.C., said the activist fell ill on Friday shortly after he was released from his punishment cell. He spent 15 days in solitary confinement, where he lost a drastic amount of weight, before he was placed in a conventional cell.
Prison officials called an ambulance on Saturday after Navalny complained of severe stomach pains, but he did not receive any care or diagnosis, one of his lawyers, Vadim Kobzev, wrote on Twitter after a prison visit.
By Monday, Navalny was back in a punishment cell for another 15-day stint, according to a Wednesday Instagram post. It marked the 13th time he’s been placed in solitary since he has been jailed.
The opposition leader added that his life has gone from “hellish to super-hellish” since he has started advocating for prison workers. In August, he was placed in solitary for attempting to start a union from behind bars.
Another spokesperson, Kira Yarmysh, said the opposition leader has previously suffered stomach issues. She further claimed that prison doctors have treated him in the past by injecting him with medicine they refuse to identify.
“When Alexei asks what he is ill with, the prison doctor mockingly answers that it is ‘just spring and everyone has exacerbations,’” she said. “We do not rule out that all this time in prison he could have been poisoned with something to make his health deteriorate slowly but steadily.”
In March 2022, Navalny was ordered to spend nine years at a high-security facility on fraud and contempt charges, which he has repeatedly claimed are politically motivated.
The anti-corruption fighter was initially arrested in January 2021 upon returning from a hospital in Germany, where he had been recuperating from what he has called an assassination attempt carried out by the Kremlin. His followers revealed he initially fell ill during a flight from Tomsk to Moscow in August, with several labs around the world having since confirmed nerve-agent poisoning to be the cause.
At that time, he was sentenced to more than two years in prison for violating probation.
Russian officials have repeatedly denied any involvement in the poisoning