FILE PHOTO: Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny attends a rally in memory of politician Boris Nemtsov, who was assassinated in 2015, in Moscow, Russia February 24, 2019. REUTERS/Tatyana Makeyeva
July 28, 2019
MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, currently serving a jail stint for calling for unauthorized protests, was hospitalized after suffering an acute allergic reaction on Sunday, his spokeswoman said.
Navalny was jailed for 30 days this week for calling for an unauthorized march to protest against the exclusion of several opposition-minded candidates from a local election later this year.
Police rounded up more than 1,000 people in the Russian capital at the march on Saturday in one of the biggest crackdowns of recent years against the opposition.
Kira Yarmysh, Navalny’s spokeswoman, wrote on Twitter that he had been hospitalized on Sunday morning with “severe swelling of the face and skin redness.”
She said the cause of Navalny’s allergic reaction was unknown and that he had never had suffered from such reactions in the past.
The Russian Interior Ministry and the Moscow hospital where Navalny’s spokeswoman said he was being treated could not immediately be reached for comment.
Navalny, Russia’s most prominent opposition figure, has served several stints in jail in recent years for organizing anti-government demonstrations.
The European Court of Human Rights last year ruled that Russia’s arrests and detention of Navalny in 2012 and 2014 were politically-motivated and breached his human rights, a ruling Moscow called questionable.
(Reporting by Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)
