Kremlin opponents on hunger strike: Alexei Navalny raises the stakes

Kremlin opponent Navalny is on a hunger strike for medical treatment. That should be a concern for the prison camp administration and the authorities.

The news that Alexei Navalny was on a hunger strike quickly spread on social media. Family and close employees reacted with alarm: it must be very bad, they wrote. Because he has always described that step as the ultimate radical political method, which you only turn to if you’re willing to go all the way.

Christina Nagel
ARD studio Moscow

Now the Kremlin critic wants to refuse to eat until a doctor enters the prison camp. Complains of back pain and leg paralysis. But is the situation really that serious? A question that has been bothering many political observers and journalists in Russia recently. There was debate and speculation. But independent sources on Navalny’s condition are lacking.

Navalny has no other choice

Russian political scientist Gleb Pavlovskij shared Navalny’s view on Doschd television station that there are hardly any other options to enforce the demands in the prison camp. “How can you underline that you really need serious medical help? Just by going on a hunger strike,” Pavlovsky said. “There is nothing else in jail.”

Navalny has been complaining of severe back pain for several weeks. In an open letter to the camp leadership, he also wrote about numbness and paralysis in the legs. It demands what every prisoner has the right to receive: an examination by a competent doctor and effective medication. You get neither one nor the other, Navalny said.

Two tablets and ointment

Prison authorities reject the accusations: the 44-year-old is receiving the necessary medical attention. But this, says human rights activist Olga Romanova, is not far off in Russian penal camps. “It can only be cured if a disease can be treated with iodine and aspirin. But that’s it,” says Romanova.

Nawalny’s lawyers had stated that they administered two pain relievers a day and one ointment. An MRI was performed in a civil hospital. But he had not received a diagnosis.

Neurologist Alexei Barinov, whom Navalny would like to consult, warns of the consequences of a hunger strike aimed at the body, which is already weakened by poisoning. There is a risk that you will fall back into a coma.

Navalny doesn’t care, but not his death

The political scientist Pavlovsky believes that the danger is bothering the authorities and the camp leadership. They do not care about the critic of the Kremlin as such. But they don’t want to be responsible for his death. “The hunger strike creates a new situation that is again about guilt,” says Pavlovsky. “New guilt, visible to everyone in the country and in the world.”

And that’s exactly what Navalny is betting on, political scientist Stanislav Belkowskij said of Echo Moskvy. Navalny is increasing his commitment in the fight against the Kremlin “to remain the center of attention of the Russian public and on the agenda of the Kremlin’s relations with the West,” Belkovsky said.

Health problems, but in the frame

Many Western politicians have reacted. He is asking the Kremlin to act. But it refers to the responsible authorities and state human rights organizations. The latter found health problems in Navalny. But everything is within the frame.

However, in the context of a Russian prison camp. Which, according to a former prisoner, it’s still about breaking people.