MOSCOW – Alexei A. Navalny, the imprisoned Russian opposition leader, has been denied visits by his doctors and lawyers.
But one unlikely visitor to the infamous punitive penal colony where he is being held turned up this week: Maria Butina, the only Russian to have served a prison sentence in the United States in connection with investigations into Russian political influence operations during and after the 2016 election. She now works for RT, a pro-Kremlin television channel.
According to reports on social media by me. Butina and supporters of mr. Navalny, the two had a face-to-face meeting that was apparently suppressed by mutual insults.
In 2018, Ms. Butina pleaded guilty in the United States to one charge of conspiracy to act as an unregistered foreign agent, sometimes referred to as a ‘spy.’ Prosecutors said Mrs. Butina accuses her of having friends with Republican Party politicians and leaders in the National Rifle Association while sending reports back to Russia. She served most of her 18-month sentence and was then deported.
Earlier this week, Mrs. Butina mnr. Navalny teased online reports because he talked about his deteriorating health in the Russian prison, Penal Colony no. 2, known under the initials IK2, in the Vladimir region east of Moscow, indicating that American prisons are worse. “Are you a man?” she wrote Wednesday.
Her visit on Thursday was apparently intended to deliver the same message in person, according to the report released by Mr. Navalny’s supporters were posted.
“Instead of a doctor, the miserable RT television propagandist Butina shows up, accompanied by video cameras,” he said. Navalny’s Telegram channel said. “She shouted that this is the best and most comfortable prison.”
Mr. Navalny survived a poisoning with a military nerve agent last year and was medically evacuated to Berlin. He returned to Russia voluntarily in January and was arrested at the airport. In February, he was sentenced to more than two years in prison.
In prison, Mr Navalny, according to his lawyer, suffered from undiagnosed back and leg pain, which said that Mr. Navalny can not rule out the long-term consequences of the poisoning. Mr. Navalny said he had a herniated disc to ride in jail vehicles and that he was losing feeling in both legs.
He also suffered from sleep deprivation because the guards woke him up at night every hour because he was classified as a flight risk, despite the fact that he and his lawyers had voluntarily returned to Russia to be arrested.
Fans of mr. Navalny says the prison authorities are deliberately subjecting him to prolonged torture, while also quickly composing small offenses, such as getting up for ten minutes or putting on a T-shirt for a meeting with his lawyers. around him to penalty block if they choose. This is a painful example for other Russian dissidents to watch.
President Emmanuel Macron of France and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany on Tuesday expressed their concern over the weakening of Mr. Navalny during a three-way video conference with Russian President Vladimir V. Putin. The Kremlin said Mr. Navalny receives adequate health care.
On Wednesday, Mr. Navalny declared a hunger strike until he was allowed to visit a specialist doctor.
The answer has me. Butina’s teasing comments spurred online, which were then personally delivered to the jail.
“A new approach for Navalny, a hunger strike,” she said. Butina wrote on Wednesday about Telegram, the messaging service. “It’s as old as the world.”
She wrote that her intention was to draw attention abroad and that others in Russian prisons had tried it before. “Look what our poor are,” she wrote of what hunger strikers wanted to convey.
“Lyosha, are you a man or not?” she wrote, referring to mr. Navalny with a diminutive of his first name. “I’m tired of complaining. He is in one of the best penal colonies in Russia. ”
Me. Butina said in his messages on Friday that Mr. Navalny, according to her, looks pale and hearty. According to her, the warden told her that Navalny was refusing medical care from prison doctors.
“Navalny is running absolutely normal,” she wrote after the visit. “He does not look like a person who ‘may not sleep’, and I can judge from my time in prison in the USA”
In describing their meeting, Ms. Butina wrote that Mr. Navalny stood in a row of prisoners. When he saw her, she writes, he ‘immediately hurled insults’. She also wrote that she asked him, “Do you know the difference between a prison and a resort?”
Me. Butina served a portion of her sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution in Tallahassee, Fla. In a memoir published after her return to Russia, Ms. Butina wrote that she was terrified of meeting transgender people in prison and was once sent to solitary confinement.
Mr. Navalny’s version of the meeting with me. Butina, according to the message from his Telegram channel, disagrees with what was said, but at least seems consistent with her assertion that it is an insult.
Mr. Navalny “read to her in front of a series of convicts for 15 minutes and called her a parasite and servant of the government of thieves,” according to the report.
It is not clear how this information was obtained and posted on its Telegram channel. Mr. Navalny has in the past conveyed messages through lawyers placing others under his name.
RT, the television channel formerly known as Russia Today which, according to Navalny’s assistants, Ms. Butina sent to his prison did not respond to a query about the visit.