Jailed Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny has gone on a hunger strike to protest his prison conditions and officials' refusal to grant him access to proper medical care, CNN reported Thursday.
Navalny has complained of a "sharp deterioration" in his health since he was transferred to a detention facility in the Vladimir region to serve a two-and-a-half year sentence on embezzlement charges.
The facility, known as the IK-2 corrective penal colony located 60 miles from Moscow, is known for its particularly harsh regime and is said to isolate inmates from the outside world.
"I have the right to call a doctor and get medications. They give me neither one nor the other. The back pain has moved to the leg," Navalny said in a post shared by his team on his Instagram page on Wednesday.
Prison physicians have provided Navalny with ibuprofen and topical pain relievers, but his request to see a doctor from outside the penitentiary has been denied.
Some 500 Russian doctors have signed an online petition calling for prison authorities to allow a doctor from outside the penitentiary to check on Navalny.
Navalny's supporters have called for a day of demonstrations across Russia this spring.
Nationwide protests that broke out in January after his imprisonment fizzled out after a massive crackdown that led to thousands of arrests.
Navalny, who survived a nerve-agent poisoning last summer traced back to Russia's Federal Security Service, said he's being subjected to "sleep deprivation torture" because a guard wakes him up every hour at night on the pretext of making sure he has not escaped.
The West, including the European Court of Human Rights, has demanded that Russia release Navalny. Russian officials have called such appeals as an unacceptable interference in its internal affairs.
It's unclear whether Navalny's condition is related to the poisoning attempt, which left him in a coma.
