Head of Russian Doctors' Alliance Detained Outside Navalny Prison

The head of Russia’s Alliance of Doctors, Anastasia Vasilyeva, was among several people detained on Tuesday, April 6, outside the penal colony in Pokrov where Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny was serving a sentence, Russian state media confirmed.

Demonstrators gathered outside the prison, located about 60 miles east of Moscow, to demand medical attention for Navalny, who a week earlier announced the start of a hunger strike, and who later described having a heavy cough and fever amid reports of a possible tuberculosis outbreak in the prison.

A lawyer for Navalny, Olga Mikhailova, on March 25 told a Moscow radio station that Navalny was already in “rather bad condition.”

Following the arrests in Pokrov on April 6, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Navalny would receive proper medical care “if he is truly ill.” Credit: Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty via Storyful