Russia's Jailed Opposition Figure Navalny Goes On Hunger Strike

Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny, who is serving a jail sentence on financial misconduct charges at the confinement of the maximum-security penal colony outside Moscow, declared a hunger strike on Wednesday, demanding that the prison administration provide him access to proper medical treatment

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 31st March, 2021) Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny, who is serving a jail sentence on financial misconduct charges at the confinement of the maximum-security penal colony outside Moscow, declared a hunger strike on Wednesday, demanding that the prison administration provide him access to proper medical treatment.

Navalny's health supposedly deteriorated four weeks ago. The blogger and former businessman, who is accused of defrauding the Russian subsidiary of French cosmetics firm Yves Rocher of 26 million rubles ($340,500), has been suffering from acute back and leg pain. His defense team has requested a doctor's visit but the prison authority has not responded yet.

"I went on a hunger strike demanding that the law be complied with and a visiting doctor be allowed to see me.

So here I am lying hungry, but so far with two legs," Navalny's Instagram post read.

It added that the pain in the back had spread to both his legs.

Lyudmila Romanova, a commissioner for human rights in the Vladimir Region, where the penitentiary is located, told Sputnik that she held no information on Navalny's hunger strike, but she would check the news that broke out in the media.

In January, Navalny returned to Moscow from Berlin after receiving medical treatment for an alleged poisoning. The activist was arrested on arrival and referred to a court, which in early February rescinded his suspended sentence in the 2014 Yves Rocher fraud case over multiple probation breaches and replaced it with a 3.5-year term behind bars. A Moscow city court reinstated the ruling but reduced the sentence to 2.5 years.