Alexey Navalny’s health is deteriorating in prison, his lawyer says

The state of Alexey Navalny’s health is deteriorating in prison, his lawyer Olga Mikhailova told Meduza on Wednesday, March 24.

“Yesterday his leg went numb. Before that his back hurt for a long time. On Friday, he was seen by a local neurologist, on Monday he was given two ibuprofen tablets, and that’s it. Naturally, he didn’t get better.”

According to Mikhailova, Navalny’s lawyers are currently near the Pokrov penal colony where he is in custody, but they aren’t being allowed inside on the pretext of “sensitive activities.”

Navalny’s chief of staff Leonid Volkov believes that the opposition politician may have been moved to the prison’s hospital, and that the prison administration wants to hide this fact.

• On March 15, it was confirmed that Alexey Navalny was in custody at Penal Colony No. 2 (IK-2) in the city of Pokrov in Russia’s Vladimir region. That same day, Navalny’s associates uploaded a Facebook post on his behalf, in which he wrote that he was “doing well overall.”
• Another social media post was published on Navalny’s behalf on March 22. It made no mention of the state of his health.