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MAXIM SHEMETOV/Reuters
A lawyer for imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny, who has complained of serious back and leg pain in custody, says doctors have found him to be suffering from two spinal hernias.
Vadim Kobzev told the Interfax news agency on Wednesday that Mr. Navalny also has a spinal protrusion and is beginning to lose sensation in his hands.
Navalny, 44, is Russian President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest domestic opponent. He was arrested in January upon returning to Moscow from Germany, where he spent five months recovering from a nerve-agent poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin. Russian authorities have rejected the accusation. Still, labs in Germany and elsewhere in Europe confirmed that Navalny was poisoned with the Soviet-era Novichok nerve agent.
A Russian court ordered Navalny in February to serve 2½ years in prison for violating the terms of his probation, including when he was convalescing in Germany, from a 2014 embezzlement conviction. Navalny has rejected the conviction as fabricated, and the European Сourt of Human Rights found it “arbitrary and manifestly unreasonable.”
A lawyer for imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who has complained of serious back and leg pain in custody, says doctors have found him to be suffering from a double hernia.
Olga Mikhailova told the independent TV channel Dozhd that Mr Navalny also is beginning to lose sensation in his hands.
Mr Navalny went on a hunger strike last week to protest against what he called poor medical care.
On Tuesday, the leader of the Navalny-backed Alliance of Doctors union was detained by police after trying to get into the prison to talk to doctors.
Mr Navalny, 44, is Russian President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest domestic opponent.
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Lawyer: Russian opposition leader Navalny has spinal hernias
April 7, 2021
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1of9In this photo taken on Saturday, Feb. 20, 2021, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny looks at photographers standing behind a glass of the cage in the Babuskinsky District Court in Moscow, Russia. Alexei Navalny says on Wednesday, March 31 he has started a prison hunger strike to protest officials failure to provide proper treatment for his back and leg pains. He also protested the hourly checks a guard makes on him at night, saying they amount to sleep deprivation torture.Alexander Zemlianichenko/APShow MoreShow Less
2of9Police officers wearing face masks to protect against coronavirus guard an entrance of the prison colony IK-2, which stands out among Russian penitentiary facilities for its particularly strict regime, with the sign reads Security zone , in Pokrov in the Vladimir region, 85 kilometers (53 miles) east of Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, April 6, 2021.