BRUSSELS – The European Union is concerned about the health of imprisoned Russian opposition activist Alexie Navalny and calls for his immediate release.
“Worrying reports that Alexei Navalny’s health has deteriorated in the penal colony. Russia authorities must give Navalny access to medical care and give his lawyers access to him,” Nabila Massrali, EU Spokesperson for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy lead by High Representative Josep Borrell, said on Twitter.
She also said that “EU continues to call for his immediate and unconditional release and a full investigation into poisoning.”
Navalny’s lawyers said earlier this week that his health had worsened. The Federal Penitentiary Service office for the Vladimir region said on Thursday that “based on the results of his examination, his state of health has been determined as stable and fair.”
Navalny is currently being held at Penal Colony No. 2 near the town of Pokrov in the Vladimir region, where he is serving time after being convicted in the so-called Yves Rocher case.
According to earlier reports, Navalny felt unwell on a plane from Tomsk to Moscow on August 20, 2020. He was hospitalized in a coma in the intensive care unit of an Omsk hospital. He was later taken to the Charite clinic in Berlin.
Navalny, German doctors and authorities, and also the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons later said he had been poisoned with a weapons-grade nerve agent from the Novichok group. The Russian authorities are denying such statements, saying they are baseless.
