Jailed Russian opposition leader may have been poisoned, says lawyer

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was discharged from hospital and returned to a Moscow jail on Monday, but speculation continued to swirl that the Kremlin’s arch foe had been deliberately poisoned.

Mr Navalny, who is serving a 30-day sentence for organising an unauthorised public protest, was hospitalised on Sunday suffering from what doctors described as an “acute allergic reaction”.

However, both his lawyer and personal physician questioned the diagnosis, saying their client, who has never suffered from allergies before, could be a victim of a chemical poisoning.

News of Mr Navalny’s mysterious illness came as Moscow reeled from a violent police crackdown on a demonstration in the city centre on Saturday where more than 1,380 people were arrested.

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Mr Navalny, who has a strong following in Russia, had called for the rally to protest against moves by the Moscow election commission to bar opposition candidates from an upcoming election for the city parliament. He was arrested three days before the event and jailed for violating Russian public meetings laws.

Mr Navalny was discharged from hospital on Monday and returned to prison despite the complaints of his personal doctor Anastasia Vasilyeva, who said he had not fully recovered.

Mr Navalny’s symptoms, including a badly swollen face and eyes and rashes on his body, could have been caused by “some toxic agent”. Hospital doctors had not made enough effort to discover the cause of the illness, she said. “Alexei himself also believes it was some kind of toxic agent.”

Olga Mikhailova, Mr Navalny’s lawyer, said she would lodge an appeal for his release on health grounds.

Blinded eye

Widespread suspicion that Mr Navalny has been poisoned has been fuelled in part by memories of an earlier chemical attack on the opposition leader that temporarily blinded his right eye. A pro-Kremlin activist caught on a security video dousing Mr Navalny with a toxic dye outside the office of his Anti-Corruption Fund in 2017 has not been prosecuted.

Although it was too soon to say if Mr Navalny’s ailments were connected to his political activities, the sudden illness of a man who is the symbol of the Russian opposition looked “extremely strange, monstrously scary and suspicious”, Alexander Kynev, a political scientist at Moscow’s Higher School of Economics, told Echo Moskvy radio.

Moscow police have released most of the people arrested at Saturday’s protest but at least 150 detainees are expected to be brought before the courts in the coming days.

A Moscow court sentenced Ilya Yashin, an opposition leader and Moscow district councillor, to 10 days in jail on Monday on charges of organising a protest that was politically motivated.

Ivan Zhdanov and Vladimir Milov, who work for Mr Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, were also handed jail sentences for organising the protest.

Some opposition activists have called for another demonstration this weekend despite the risk of further reprisals.

Both the uncompetitive handling of the election and the harsh crackdown on the protests that followed indicated that the authorities were in the grip of “paranoia” and “hysteria”, Mr Kynev said.