Keeping 44-year-old jailed Russian dissident Alexi Navalny in the headlines, his personal doctor Yaroslav Ashikhmin said his health had deteriorated to the point that it threatened his life. “His condition is indeed critical,” said Alexandra Zakharova, spokeswoma for the Doctors Alliance trade union, a group that the Kremlin links to Navalny’s opposition network. Zakharov said the Russian dissident was a risk of kidney failure and vision loss, more than two weeks into his hunger strike. If you listen to the pro-Navalny Western press, you’d think his deteriorating condition was a deliberate attempt by prison officials to kill Putin’s most vocal critic. No one in the press connects his deteriorated medical condition to his over two-week-long hunger strike. Prison officials didn’t force Navalny to stop eating or drinking but instead talked of force- feeding him if he gets any worse.
Navalny insists he was poisoned Aug. 24, 2020 with Soviet-era nerve agent Novichok while in Tomsk, Siberia. When he lapsed into a coma, he was emergency airlifted to Berlin for urgent medical treatment. Navalny stayed in Germany for five months before returning to Moscow Jan. 17 where he was promptly arrested. tried, convicted and sentenced Feb. 2 to two-years-eight months in a harsh penal colony, a former Soviet gulag. Navalny’s decision to return to Moscow prompted his current legal problems, just like he’s causing own health problems. Without analyzing Navalny too much, he’s received so much attention from the Western press, including 78-year-old President Joe Biden and 58-year-old Secretary of State Tony Blinken, he thought he was invincible, defying all logic, putting himself in harm’s way returning to Russia after his alleged Novichok poisoning.
Whatever medical condition Navalny has now, it’s his own doing, imposing a hunger strike, thinking, again, that it’s going to manipulate Russian prison officials or Russian President Vladimir Putin to pardon him. Navalny feeds off the Western press which is obsessed with his case, now screaming about his dire medical condition. When is the press going to be honest about Navalny that he’s his own worst enemy? No one told him to return to Russia or, for that matter, to go on a hunger strike. “Our patient could die at any moment,” Dr. Ashikhmin said, indicating that he had elevated postassium and creatine levels, a possible precursor to a heart attack. Whatever the press theatrics surrounding Navalny, Dr. Ashikhmin should tell his patient to start eating-and-drinking again before it’s too late. If Navalny dies in prison at this point, it won’t be due to anything prison officials did to him.
Navalny’s physician alliance thinks his condition has deteriorated, looking more urgent by the day. “His condition is indeed critical,” sad Zakharova. “We have seen the tests, and they are very, very bad,” referring to the elevated potassium and creatinine levels. Prison officials can do no more to save Navalny that letting him figure out that a prolonged temper tantrum won’t get him his way. If Navalny really cares about his anti-Putin cause, he should take the long view and do what’s necessary to survive in a Russian penal colony: Follow orders and eat-and-drink what’s given to him. “His postassium is high and he has other high readings which indicate that his kidneys may soon fail. This would lead to severe pathology and cardiac arrest may occur,” Zakharova said. If she’s advising her patient, she should tell him stop his hunger strike, consume food and plenty of liquids to reverse the effect of starvation.
Navalny gets sympathy from the U.S. and European Union [EU] because he’s offered what looks like an alternative to Putin. But in reality, Putin’s firmly entrenched in Russia and there’s nothing short of a national revolution that can remove him from power. Navalny’s clandestine organization, run by his assistant Leonid Volkov, stages demonstration around Russia, promising a major one this spring. Showing support for Navalny, like Biden, Blinker and EU’s Ursula von der Leyen, translates to Putin into they want him out. Whether admitted to or not, all the pressure from the U.S. and EU has made life for Navalny more difficult. Putin and the Kremlin aren’t about to capitulate to outside pressure, no matter where it’s coming. If Navalny kills himself in prison, it won’t spark a revolution as his backers think. It will be one more martyr in a cause that has no chance of succeeding.
Navalny’s attorney and doctors need to tell him in the strongest possible way to stop his temper tantrum and accept his fate in a Russian penal colony. Consume as much food and liquid as he can, keep his wits and try to survive the next two-and-a-half years. It’s obvious to any objective third party that Navalny is trying to kill himself, acting selfishly because he has no power in prison. Navalny must remind himself that he could have taken asylum in Germany or anywhere else in the West before returning to Moscow Jan. 17. Navalny should have followed more closely fellow dissident Mikhail Khorodorkovsky, once Russia’s richest man, who took Putin’s offer to seek asylum in Switzerland and the U.K. Khordorkovsky continues his dissident work from afar, enjoying his freedom in the U.K. At the rate Navalny’s going, he won’t make it to a better life in exile.
