MOSCOW – Opposition leader arrested in Russia, Aleksey Navalny, is on a hunger strike in a notorious penal colony. He says he suffers from back pain while prison guards “torture” him, waking him up every hour of the night. Independent prison observers are desperate to see how he is doing, with hundreds of Russian public figures sending open letters and petitions to the authorities, calling for an end to the humiliating treatment. Human rights activists addressed the Kremlin on Friday more directly: “He is being killed slowly.”
The answer? Instead of sending an independent human rights observer or doctor to visit Navalny in prison, the Kremlin sent Maria Butina, a Russian spy and former US inmate. Now a pro-Kremlin activist, Butina pleaded guilty in a U.S. court in 2018 to acting as a Russian agent while infiltrating NRA and Republican political circles.
Butina reported what she heard from other prisoners in the prison colony, called IK-2, complaining not about the conditions of the prison, but about Navalny himself. Butina said that other prisoners despised Navalny for “lying in bed all day like a master” and that he “does not clean after himself”. She insisted that Navalny was living in better condition than in an American prison. “My recommendation to Aleksey: if you have committed a crime, be a man, do your time.”
Butina also posted a video clip that shows Navalny walking slowly in his barracks: “He’s walking! Oh, this is magical! With a cup of coffee, ”she commented. Mr. Navalny said that his legs were going numb with back pain.
Butina said Navalny was rude to her during the 20-minute conversation, accusing her of telling lies and stealing. A transcript of the alleged dialogue with Navalny was posted on Telegram, with Butina saying: “You know very well that if you are not cleaning, someone will clean it for you. I was in prison. I know it becomes someone else’s responsibility. ”Navalny reportedly responded by saying that she lies a lot, and that,“ everything [she says] they are endless lies, including your stories about the American prison. “
Human rights defenders were in shock. “At a time when Navalny obviously needs professional medical help, they send a team from the state TV channel RT to that same penal colony – this is an unacceptable situation,” Tanya Lokshina, director of the Russian program for Human Rights Watch, told The Daily Beast.
The rules do not prohibit an external doctor from providing care in prison, explained Lokshina, adding that his team is “aware of cases where the Russian prison system has provided civilian doctors for sick inmates”.
Butina’s comments horrified a former IK-2 inmate, Vladimir Pereverzin, who had served there seven years, describing the experience as a total nightmare.
“It is difficult to imagine anything more cynical and misleading,” Pereverzin, who was arrested and arrested after a crackdown on an oil company a decade ago, told the Daily Beast. “Nobody can stay in bed in that prison. If she says he stays in bed all the time, it means he is so sick that the prison doctor allowed him. ”
“The prison guards constantly humiliated me,” he added. “They made reports against me, so, like Navalny, I had to go on a hunger strike. I even stabbed myself in the stomach and only then did they move me to a single cell, which was a great relief. “
An opposition playwright and satirist, Viktor Shenderovich, said Butina’s visit symbolized a general tone of mockery in Kremlin politics.
“The government decided to kill Navalny, to destroy him physically and morally,” Shenderovich told the Daily Beast. “This is not a political movement, but a moral issue: Russia is now divided between the obvious defenders of good and those who support evil.”
Shenderovich described the Butina ordeal as a kind of “victory” for those loyal to the Kremlin.
“Many Kremlin supporters are laughing now when they read Butina’s comments,” he said. “They are happy to see the Kremlin trolling and mocking the West and Navalny’s supporters. But in reality, this is the humiliation of morality itself. “