An Update on Alexey Navalny’s Health

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Let me just start by asking you, what is the latest information you have on Alexei Navalny’s health?

LEONID VOLKOV: The latest information is that he has been transferred to a prison hospital on Sunday. Today, his lawyers managed to visit him. He’s very weak, but he’s still able to walk. He is now in the 21st day of his hunger strike. He felt bad during the transportation from his colony to the prison hospital. And he felt like very ill. So, he was given some glucose. But now he’s, well, back on the hunger strike. And he’s designated to keep on.

AMANPOUR: So, he’s being fed on a glucose drip. Is that something with his approval, with his consent?

VOLKOV: As far as I understood from his letter today, from his message today, he was kind of very weak, and they kind of just gave him this glucose drop counter, just for a few while, just to support him. I’m not sure if he thought — if he was strong enough to give consent for this.

AMANPOUR: And what do you really think? What does Navalny’s team, you and the others on the outside who are desperate to get — to get him some help? Do you really believe that the Kremlin would allow him to die in prison on their watch? We have heard the Russian ambassador to the U.K. say that will never happen.

VOLKOV: Well, I will put it this way. On August 20, 2020, Vladimir Putin didn’t shoot Alexei Navalny in his forehead with a bullet. He ordered to kill him covertly, so that a doctor would find out it was a heart attack when the plane would land and Alexei Navalny’s dead body would be found. It didn’t work out, but the plan was not to kill him, but to kill him in such ways that Putin is out of suspicion. So I would say that now, probably, I can — ironically, could reed to the Russian ambassador to the U.K. [14:05:03] They don’t want him to die in prison in put in custody, but they definitely want him to suffer. So they don’t have anything against if he would just like rot in prison and, like, suffer enormously. And then, well, it’s Russian prison medicine. These are ignorant, unqualified people. And anything should happen just by itself. So, where did the hunger strike start? Because he was feeling bad, and no treatment was suggested, and no diagnosis was given for what’s going on. He developed numbness in his legs and then in his arms, and no one was telling him anything. So, it’s kind of — they’re not trying to kill him, sure. But it looks like they don’t have nothing against if he dies, or if he has, like, severe health problems which would, like, prevent him from function politically in the future.