(UTV | MOSCOW) – Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny ‘is dying’ and could suffer a cardiac arrest at ‘any minute’, his doctor warned today as medics are barred from the penal colony.
Vladimir Putin’s most prominent rival, 44, was imprisoned in February and is serving two-and-a-half years on old embezzlement charges in the town of Pokrov, around 60 miles east of Moscow.
Six months earlier, he barely survived a poisoning with the Novichok nerve agent, which he has blamed on the Kremlin.
Then at the end of last month, he went on a hunger strike to demand proper medical treatment for back pain and numbness in his legs and hands.
This may have exacerbated his condition, doctors said, as they asked prison officials to grant them immediate access.
‘Our patient can die any minute,’ cardiologist Yaroslav Ashikhmin said on Facebook today, pointing to Navalny’s high potassium levels and saying he should be moved to intensive care.
‘Fatal arrhythmia can develop any minute.’
Having blood potassium levels higher than 6.0 mmol (millimole) per litre usually requires immediate treatment. Navalny’s were at 7.1, the doctors said.
