Alexei Navalny’s private doctors warned reporters Monday that he could “die at any minute.”
Their warning came as President Joe Biden and his administration began to speak out on the plight of the imprisoned Russian dissident considered the most high-profile critic of President Vladimir Putin’s regime.
“It’s totally, totally unfair,” the President told reporters on Saturday at a golf club in Wilmington, Delaware. “Totally inappropriate.”
A day later, White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told CNN that the administration has warned the Kremlin “that there will be consequences” if Navalny dies.
Based on several reports Monday morning, Navalny has been moved to a regional hospital and is in the ward controlled by the prison administration.
His team is planning a street rally on April 21. They have announced this online and require people interested in attending to register.
But sources close to Navalny’s team told Newsmax that hackers broke into their network of computers and stole the list of all those who registered to participate. The Navalny team would like to have at least 500,000 people on the streets of Moscow and St Petersburg.
Biden’s failure to mention Navalny in his phone call to Putin Tuesday or address on Russia two days later sparked widespread criticism in the Russian exile community.
“The entire human rights community very much await that Mr Biden, [German Chancellor Angela] Merkel, [French President Emmanuel] Macron and other leaders will ask the question in each of their conversations with Mr. Putin,” Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a former prisoner in Russia for ten years and now in exile in London, told Newsmax after Biden’s call.
Navalny was arrested and imprisoned in January after returning to Russia following his recovery in Germany from near-fatal poisoning — something the dissident and his supporters blame on Putin.
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
Source: Newmax
