Alexei Navalny taken to hospital as fears grow for health of jailed Kremlin critic

The imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who is in the third week of a hunger strike, has been transferred to hospital as fears grow for his health.

The Russian state penitentiary service made the announcement two days after Mr Navalny’s doctor said the 44-year-old Kremlin critic could be on the verge of death.

Mr Navalny is to be transferred to a hospital for prisoners located in another penal colony in Vladimir, a city 110 miles east of Moscow, the state prison service, FSIN, said in a statement.

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According to the statement, Mr Navalny’s condition is deemed “satisfactory” and he has agreed to take vitamin supplements.

Mr Navalny’s doctor Yaroslav Ashikhmin said on Saturday that test results he received from Mr Navalny’s family show him with sharply elevated levels of potassium, which can bring on cardiac arrest, and heightened creatinine levels that indicate impaired kidneys.

Mr Navalny, an anti-corruption investigator, was arrested on January 17 on returning from Germany, where he spent five months recovering from a nerve-agent poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin. Russian authorities have rejected the accusation.

In February, a Moscow court ruled that while in Germany, Mr Navalny violated probation terms of his suspended sentence from a 2014 money-laundering conviction and ordered him to serve two years and eight months in prison. The ruling prompted international outrage.