(Berlin) Russia must provide “immediate” medical care for opponent Alexei Navalny, imprisoned for two years and whose state of health has deteriorated, the German government said on Friday.
“We received with great concern the information concerning the critical state of health of Alexei Navalny”, declared during a regular press briefing a spokesperson for the German government, Christiane Hoffmann.
She called on Moscow for “immediate” medical treatment of the opponent, targeted in 2020 by poisoning attributed to the Russian security services.
“What happens to Navalny can apply to all those in Russia who raise their voices against the regime” of President Vladimir Putin, warned the spokesperson about the opponent, treated in Berlin after his poisoning.
Mr. Navalny, 46, said on Wednesday that he suffered from flu-like symptoms and was deprived of satisfactory access to care, his supporters denouncing an attempt by the Kremlin to “kill” him slowly.
He says he has to lead “a fierce struggle” to obtain “basic medicines” and was refused hospitalization in the medical unit of his prison, located 200 km from Moscow.
The prison administration also obliges, he says, anyone detained in the same cell as him to go back and forth with the prison medical unit, in the grip of an influenza epidemic.
Russian President “(Vladimir) Putin tries again and again to kill Navalny, but in a more discreet and slower way”, denounced his team on Wednesday.
Nearly 500 Russian doctors have signed a petition, posted on Facebook, calling on Vladimir Putin to provide proper care to Mr. Navalny and to end the “abuse” against him.
Mr. Navalny, the pet peeve of the Russian president and opponent of the military offensive in Ukraine, was arrested in Russia in January 2021, on his return to the country after suffering the serious poisoning he attributes to the Kremlin.
In March, he was sentenced to nine years in “severe” prison for charges of “swindle” which he considers fictitious. The judgment had a “political motivation”, for its part denounced Friday the spokesperson of the German government.