Putin, who turns 69 this year, is currently serving his fourth presidential term, scheduled to end in 2024. The new legislation, announced on Monday, could allow him to serve two more six-year terms if he chooses to run. and win re-election both times.
The new law formalizes the results of last year’s referendum on amendments to Russia’s constitution.
In addition to setting the clock at the limits of Putin’s mandate, the referendum was also a vote on a number of other amendments, including a clause that defined marriage strictly as a “union of a man and a woman”.
Navalny was flown to Germany for emergency treatment after his poisoning in Siberia last year, which he said was ordered by Putin and executed by agents of the Russian security service, the FSB. The Kremlin has repeatedly denied the accusations.
Naval hunger strike
On Monday, Navalny said he would continue the strike despite having a high fever and a strong cough amid an outbreak of tuberculosis among his prison cellmates, according to an Instagram post shared by his team on his official account .
“The third person on my team was recently hospitalized with tuberculosis,” said Navalny. “There are 15 people in the detachment, that is, 20% of them are sick, this is much higher than the epidemiological threshold. Which is? Do you think you are in a state of emergency, the ambulance sirens are ringing? , bosses are concerned only with how to hide the statistics. “
He criticized the recent Russian state media coverage of conditions within the penal colony after Maria Butina, an official with the state broadcaster RT, visited the prison and said it was “practically exemplary”.
Butina served time in a U.S. prison after pleading guilty to trying to infiltrate conservative political circles and promote Russian interests before and after the 2016 presidential election.
On Instagram, Navalny said that “there are unsanitary conditions, tuberculosis, lack of medication. Looking at the horrible plaques on which we put our porridge, I am usually surprised that there is still no Ebola virus here.”
He added that the prison lacked the sustenance and nutrients needed to keep prisoners healthy.
“I continue my hunger strike, of course,” wrote Navalny in the post. “I have a legally guaranteed right to invite a specialist doctor at my own expense. I will not give up, prison doctors are as reliable as state TV.”
A prominent opposition-affiliated Russian doctors ‘union, Doctors’ Alliance, run by a Navalny ally, said on Monday via a YouTube video that a group of doctors will go to Navalny prison on Tuesday to demand attention appropriate medical care for the opposition figure.