Doctors treating Alexei Navalny, a prominent activist and political opponent of Putin, explain that Navalny may suffer kidney failure or cardiac arrest in the next few days if not treated properly. 

Navalny claimed to have been poisoned, and was arrested this January. Many consider this as an overt human rights violation. 

For the past half a month – 19 days to be precise – Navalny has participated in a hunger strike to be allowed his own doctors instead of the one person team the prison employs. Now, Navalny has reached dangerous potassium levels. 

“Having received test results we, the doctors of Alexey Navalny, address the head of Federal Penitentiary Service. Due to the critical state of health of Alexay Navalny we express our concerns and our readiness to enter into discussion followed by consilium,” said the doctors of Navalny in a Twitter statement. 

This has caused an uproar in social media as well as in the international stage. 

US President Biden deemed this “totally unfair and totally inappropriate” while speaking to journalists. 

Last month, the United States government reached the conclusion that it was indeed the Russian government who poisoned Navalny, imposing sanctions against Russian officials. 

In addition, an open letter was published by many celebrities demanding Russia to uphold human rights. 

However, some people disagree with the scale of events. 

“There’s no proof that it’s the Russian government so you can’t really prove anything in the UN, so there’s no way to definitively punish Russia. Since it’s only one person that’s also high profile I wouldn’t say it’s too big of a deal although it is suppression of the freedom of speech. I think it’s being exaggerated just because it’s Russian. There are human rights violations in many countries that people don’t care about and that are much greater in scale; No one ever talks of all the homosexual bans in the world for example,” said Richard Li (‘22). 

The prison is known for its harsh conditions, with many human rights groups comparing time spent there to torture.