Russia’s top diplomat has again been forced to address persistent reports in the West that President Vladimir Putin is suffering from an undisclosed illness, denying the 69-year-old Mr. Putin faces any serious health issues and accusing those who question his stamina and judgment of having ulterior motives.
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, in an interview late Sunday with French television network TF1, once again insisted that Mr. Putin is not sick.
“President Vladimir Putin makes public appearances on a daily basis,” Mr. Lavrov said when asked directly about Mr. Putin‘s status. “You can see him on TV screens, read and listen to his speeches. I don’t think that a sane person can suspect any signs of an illness or ailment in this man.”
“I’ll leave it on the conscience of those who disseminate such rumors despite daily opportunities for everyone to see how he and others look like,” he added.
Discussions about Mr. Putin‘s health are virtually taboo inside Russia, but outside analysts say his face has appeared puffy and his gait unsteady in recent videos and there appeared to be a suspicious tremor in at least one of his hands.
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has announced a hunger strike at the penal colony where he is held, to demand proper medical treatment.
He has complained on Instagram of not receiving medical help for back pain and problems with his right leg, as well as being deprived of sleep.
Navalny, 44, returned home from Germany in January after treatment for a nerve agent attack in Siberia in August.
He was taken into custody immediately and then given a jail sentence.
He is currently being detained at the IK-2 corrective penal colony 100 km (60 miles) east of Moscow and has accused the guards there of denying him proper treatment for his ailments.
Russia’s federal penitentiary service has rejected his complaint, insisting he had “all the necessary medical assistance in accordance with his medical indications”.
A fierce critic of President Vladimir Putin, Navalny was given a two-year and eight month sentence last month for violating the probation terms of an embezzlement case.
The conviction was widely seen as politically motivated and the European Court of Human Rights said he should be freed because of the risk to his life. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said this week that Navalny was “responsible for his deeds under the law” and no different from any other Russian.
image captionNavalny’s most recent photograph in the penal colony was published in an Instagram post
Navalny’s Instagram post on Wednesday, published by his lawyers, shows a handwritten note in which the Kremlin critic writes: “I have declared a hunger strike demanding that the law be upheld and a doctor of my choice be allowed to visit me.”
“I have the right to invite a doctor and receive medication. But they are simply not allowing me to do either. The back pain has spread to my leg. I’ve lost sensation in parts of my right leg and now the left leg too. Jokes aside, this is getting worrying,” he wrote.
He said in an earlier post that he had only been given two tablets of the painkiller ibuprofen and was yet to be diagnosed. The penitentiary service (FSIN) said at the time that his health was stable and satisfactory.
Navalny has also complained of being woken up every hour by a guard during the night which he argues amounts to torture. The FSIN said in its statement on Wednesday that staff carried out “a visual inspection of the convicts’ presence on their beds” but that did not disturb their sleep.
As well as serious back pain, he spoke of numbness in his leg which was preventing him from standing on it. He thought he was suffering from a pinched nerve after standing “crookedly” in cages during court appearances and travelling in police wagons.
We use cookies to optimize our website and our service.
Functional
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
