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Alexei Navalny moved to hospital as fears grow for life of Putin critic

<span>Photograph: Moscow City Court press service/AFP/Getty Images</span>
Photograph: Moscow City Court press service/AFP/Getty Images

Alexei Navalny has been transferred to a prison hospital as concerns have grown among supporters that the opposition leader is dangerously ill and could die “at any minute”.

Navalny’s transfer came after his doctors released paperwork showing that the Kremlin critic, who has been on hunger strike for nearly three weeks, said he was in danger of a heart attack or kidney failure.

In a statement on Monday, Russia’s prisons service said a doctors’ committee had decided to transfer Navalny to an infirmary in another prison in the Vladimir region that “specialises in dynamic monitoring of similar patients”.

“Currently Navalny’s health is evaluated as satisfactory, he is being examined daily by a doctor. With his agreement he has been prescribed vitamin therapy,” it said

His doctors and other representatives do not know what regime has been prescribed and whether he freely consented to it.

Navalny’s supporters say the authorities are hiding information about his condition and described the infirmary in the IK-3 prison colony as specialising in critically ill tuberculosis patients.

“This needs to be recognised as showing that Navalny’s condition has worsened,” wrote Ivan Zhdanov, the head of Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation. “And it’s gotten so much worse that even the torture chamber has admitted it.”

Navalny’s top aides have announced large protests in his support on Wednesday, setting up a potential clash between demonstrators and police. Late last week, Moscow’s prosecutor applied to a court to recognise his organisation to be recognised as extremist, threatening to liquidate his regional headquarters and investigative operation if it is approved.

Another of Navalny’s top allies, Vladimir Milov, announced on Monday he had fled Russia for Europe to avoid possible arrest ahead of the rally.

“We consulted with our colleagues and decided that it is better for me not to be arrested now, because my area of work is very important,” Milov said in a live webcast from the Navalny Live YouTube channel. Many of Navalny’s leading supporters in Russia have been put under house arrest as part of ongoing investigations into a series of opposition protests from January.

On Monday, the EU’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, said “we make the Russian authorities responsible for the health situation of Mr Navalny”, as the US has threatened consequences if Navalny were to die in prison.

Borrell’s remarks came ahead of a meeting of EU foreign ministers, where European envoys are expected to discuss Navalny’s case and growing tensions with Moscow over a military buildup on the Ukrainian border, as well as revelations of a suspected GRU plot behind a deadly explosion at a Czech ammunition warehouse in 2014.

There are few signs the Kremlin is willing to relent or give in to demands by the US president, Joe Biden, and other western leaders for Navalny to be released from custody. On Sunday, Russia’s ambassador to the UK, Andrei Kelin, accused Navalny of attention-seeking behaviour.

“He will not be allowed to die in prison, but I can say that Mr Navalny, he behaves like a hooligan, absolutely,” Kelin told the BBC. The ambassador added: “His purpose for all of that is to attract attention for him[self].”