The imprisoned Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny suffers from a mysterious illness – his spokeswoman does not rule out that the Putin critic could have been poisoned again. The Austrian Foreign Ministry is now also deeply concerned about the deteriorating state of health – and is demanding Navalny’s immediate release.
“We call on the Russian authorities for his unconditional and immediate release and for emergency medical treatment,” the Foreign Ministry said on Twitter on Friday. The Council of Europe had also expressed major concerns. Was Navalny administered slow poison? A spokeswoman for Navalny has warned of the possible poisoning of the imprisoned Russian opposition politician. “We do not exclude that at this moment Alexei Navalny is slowly being poisoned, slowly being killed so that it attracts less attention,” Kira Jarmysch wrote on Twitter on Thursday. The 46-year-old was suffering from a mysterious illness in custody, which could be a slow-acting poison. Serious poisoning in 2020 Former lawyer Navalny narrowly survived an apparent poisoning attempt during a flight in Siberia in 2020, during which Western laboratory tests were taking place alleges a nerve agent was used. Russia denies that the state tried to kill him. Navalny had been treated for the poisoning in Germany but voluntarily returned to Russia in 2021. He was arrested on arrival and sentenced to several years in prison for violating probation and fraud. Navalny spoke of a politically motivated process. Imprisoned in penal colony 6 in MelekhovoNavalny is considered a political prisoner and the harshest critic of Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin. Because of alleged fraud, he is being held in penal colony 6 in Melekhovo, about 260 kilometers north-east of Moscow – under particularly harsh prison conditions . “It’s one and the same,” he summarizes. Everything is aimed at dehumanizing and harassing the detainees. There have never been any reforms, apart from one single innovation: there is now a church in every penal colony.
