Image: Alexander Zemlianichenko Image: Alexander Zemlianichenko JAILED KREMLIN CRITIC Alexei Navalny said today he is going on hunger strike until he receives proper medical treatment for severe back pain and numbness in his legs.
“I have gone on a hunger strike demanding that the law be obeyed and that a doctor be allowed to visit me,” he said. “From outside it looks complicated. But on the inside it’s simple: you have no other way to fight back, so you go on hunger strike,” he added. “I’m hungry, but at least I have both legs.”He added that he was lying in bed with a Bible in hand – the only book he has managed to receive so far.
He joked that he did not want to “part with” his right leg and quipped about becoming a one-legged pirate. Rights activists say Penal Colony No.2 is one of Russia’s worst and his Navalny’s wife Yulia has appealed directly to Putin to set his critic free. Today, Navalny’s ally Lyubov Sobol, who went on hunger strike in 2019 after she and a raft of other opposition politicians were barred from balloting in local elections, said that watching his ordeal was “very painful”.