The long-running confrontation between the Kremlin and Alexei Navalny took a darker turn this week as Russia’s best-known opposition figure launched a hunger strike to demand proper medical attention and protest his prison treatment.
Now his allies are openly voicing fears that Russian President Vladimir Putin once again wants him dead.
Navalny, 44, barely survived a poisoning seven months ago with a military-grade nerve agent, an attack Western governments blamed on the Russian security services. Now he is serving a 2½-year sentence in a harsh penal colony east of Moscow, after returning to Russia in January from Germany, where he spent months convalescing from his poisoning ordeal.
