MOSCOW – Aleksei A. Navalny, the imprisoned Russian opposition leader, has been denied visits by his doctors and lawyers.
But an unlikely visitor to the notoriously severe penal colony where he is being detained appeared this week: Maria Butina, the only Russian serving a prison sentence in the United States in connection with investigations into Russian political influence operations during and after the 2016 elections. She now works for RT, a pro-Kremlin television channel.
According to social media posts from Butina and Navalny’s supporters, the two had a face-to-face meeting that appeared to have been punctuated by mutual insults.
In 2018, Ms. Butina pleaded guilty in the United States to a charge of conspiracy to act as an unregistered foreign agent, sometimes called the “spy light.” Prosecutors accused Butina of making friends with politicians and Republican Party leaders in the National Rifle Association while sending reports to Russia. She served most of her 18-month sentence and was later deported.
Earlier this week, Mrs. Butina insulted Mr. Navalny in online posts for talking about his health deterioration in the Russian prison, Penal Colony No. 2, known by his initials IK2, in the Vladimir region, east of Moscow , suggesting that American prisons are worse. “You’re a man?” she wrote on Wednesday.
His visit on Thursday seemed destined to deliver the same message in person, according to the account published by Navalny’s supporters.
“Instead of a doctor, today the miserable TV propagandist RT Butina arrived, accompanied by video cameras,” said Navalny’s Telegram channel. “She was screaming that this is the best and most comfortable prison.”
Navalny narrowly survived poisoning with a military nerve agent last year and was evacuated medically to Berlin. He voluntarily returned to Russia in January and was arrested at the airport. In February, he was sentenced to more than two years in prison.
In prison, Navalny suffered from undiagnosed back and leg pains, according to his lawyer, who said Navalny could not rule out the persistent effects of the poisoning. Navalny said he has a herniated disc from riding in prison transport vehicles and is losing sensation in both legs.
He also suffered from sleep deprivation because guards woke him hourly at night, because he was classified as a flight hazard, despite voluntarily returning to Russia to be arrested, he and his lawyers said.
Navalny’s supporters say that prison officials are intentionally subjecting him to prolonged torment, while counting minor enough offenses, such as waking up 10 minutes late or wearing a T-shirt to a meeting with his lawyers, to send him to a punishment block, if they so wish. It is a painful example for other Russian dissidents to watch.
On Tuesday, President Emmanuel Macron of France and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany raised concerns about Navalny’s deteriorating health during a triple videoconference with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. The Kremlin said that Navalny receives adequate health care.
On Wednesday, Navalny declared a hunger strike until he was allowed to visit a specialist doctor.
The response prompted provocative comments from Butina online, which were delivered personally in prison.
“A new approach for Navalny, a hunger strike,” Butina wrote on Telegram, the messaging service, on Wednesday. “It is as old as the world.”
She wrote that her intention was to attract attention abroad and that other people in Russian prisons had tried this before. “See what a poor thing we are,” she wrote of what the strikers intended to convey.
“Lyosha, are you a man or not?” she wrote, referring to Mr. Navalny by a diminutive of his first name. “I am tired of complaining. He is in one of the best penal colonies in Russia. “
In messages on Friday, Butina said that Navalny, in his opinion, looked healthy and vigorous. She said the director had told her that Navalny was refusing medical care from prison doctors.
“Navalny is absolutely normal,” she wrote after the visit. “He doesn’t look like a ‘sleep-deprived’ person, and I can judge by the time I spent in prison in the USA”
In describing the meeting, Ms. Butina wrote that Mr. Navalny was in a line of prisoners. When he saw her, she wrote, he “immediately launched insults”. She also wrote that she asked him, “Do you know the difference between a prison and a resort?”
Ms. Butina served part of her sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution in Tallahassee, Florida. In a memoir published after her return to Russia, Ms. Butina wrote that she was horrified to meet transgender people in the penitentiary and that she was once sent to solitary confinement.
Navalny’s version of the meeting with Butina, according to his channel’s post on Telegram, differs in what has been said, but at least it seems consistent with his claim that it was an insulting exchange.
Mr. Navalny “gave her a 15-minute sermon in front of a line of convicts, calling her a parasite and a servant to the government of thieves,” according to the post.
It is unclear exactly how this information was obtained and posted on your Telegram channel. Mr. Navalny has already broadcast messages through lawyers that other people post on his behalf.
RT, the television channel formerly known as Russia Today that Navalny’s aides said had dispatched Butina to his prison, did not answer a question about the visit.