Alexei Navalny, Russian President Vladimir Putin's most prominent critic, said today he is going on hunger strike in prison in the latest chapter of his high-profile confrontation with the Kremlin.
Over the past decade, the 44-year-old anti-corruption campaigner has emerged as Russia's most prominent opposition politician, even though he has never held elected office.
In February, Mr Navalny was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison on old embezzlement charges, becoming the country's highest-profile prisoner who keeps needling the Kremlin from behind bars.
He complained this month that he was losing sensation in both legs due to what he believed was a pinched nerve in his back and said that a prison doctor had not given him a diagnosis.
This evening, he announced he is going on hunger strike until he receives proper treatment.
Last August, the father-of-two barely survived a poisoning attack with what Western doctors and experts say was Novichok, a Soviet-designed nerve agent.
The poisoning ordeal has drawn global attention to Mr Navalny and raised his international profile, with German Chancellor Angela Merkel visiting him while he was undergoing treatment in a Berlin hospital.
His decision to return to Russia in January despite the threat of arrest and jail has been seen as a direct challenge to President Putin.
The campaigner's call for demonstrations was answered by tens of thousands who rallied in cities across Russia in January and February, demanding Navalny's release from prison and denouncing Putin's rule.
Alexei Navalny has won a young fan base through viral videos exposing corruption among the elites and has 2.6 million followers on Twitter.
He has also grabbed attention with his uncompromising rhetoric and coined phrases such as the "party of crooks and thieves" to slam the ruling United Russia party.
In 2014, he was given the suspended sentence for embezzlement, and his brother Oleg, a co-defendant, was jailed for three-and-a-half years in a decision activists likened to a "hostage-taking".
Before he flew back from Germany in January, papers were filed with a Moscow court asking for that suspended sentence to be converted into jail time, a move Mr Navalny's allies said was an attempt to block his return.
With the Kremlin tightly controlling the media, he nonetheless remains a fringe figure for many Russians, who are exposed to the official portrayal of him as a Western stooge and convicted criminal.
President Putin has refused to pronounce Alexei Navalny's name in public.
