Russian Ex-Con of U.S. Penal System Meets, Taunts Imprisoned Navalny

April 2, 2021 by Staff Reporter

MOSCOW — Aleksei A. Navalny, the imprisoned Russian opposition leader, has been denied visits from his doctors and lawyers.

But one unlikely visitor to the notoriously harsh penal colony where he is being held did turn up this week: Maria Butina, the only Russian to serve prison time in the United States in relation to investigations of Russian political influence operations during and after the 2016 election. She now works for RT, a pro-Kremlin television channel.

According to social media posts by Ms. Butina and supporters of Mr. Navalny, the two had a face-to-face encounter that appeared to have been punctuated by mutual insults. There has been no video or other photographic corroboration of such an encounter, and as of Friday RT had not published a story about it.

In 2018, Ms. Butina pleaded guilty in the United States to one charge of conspiring to act as an unregistered foreign agent, sometimes called “espionage light.” Prosecutors accused Ms. Butina of having befriended 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 then was deported.

declared a hunger strike until he is allowed a visit with a specialist doctor.

The response triggered Ms. Butina’s taunting commentary online that was then delivered in person at the prison.

“A new approach for Navalny, a hunger strike,” Ms. Butina wrote on Telegram, the messaging service, on Wednesday. “It’s as old as the world.”

She wrote that his intent was to draw attention abroad and that others in Russian prisons had tried this before. “Look what little poor ones we are,” she wrote of what hunger 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’m tired of the complaining. He is in one of the best penal colonies in Russia.”

Ms. Butina in posts on Friday said Mr. Navalny, in her view, looked hale and hearty. She said the warden told her Mr. Navalny was refusing medical care from prison doctors.

“Navalny walks absolutely normally,” she wrote after the visit. “He doesn’t look like a person ‘not allowed to sleep,’ and I can judge from my time in prison in the U.S.A.”

In describing their encounter, Ms. Butina wrote that Mr. Navalny had been standing in a line of prisoners. When he saw her, she wrote, he “immediately hurled insults.” She also wrote that she asked him: “Do you know the difference between a prison and a resort?”

Ms. 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 she had been horrified to meet transgender people in the penitentiary and had once been sent to solitary confinement.

Mr. Navalny’s version of the encounter with Ms. Butina, according to his Telegram channel’s posting, differed on what was said, but at least seemed consistent with her assertion that it was an insult-fueled exchange.

Mr. Navalny “for 15 minutes lectured her before a line of convicts, calling her a parasite and servant of the government of thieves,” according to the posting.

Precisely how this information was obtained and posted to his Telegram channel is not clear. Mr. Navalny has conveyed messages through lawyers in the past that others post under his name.

RT, the television channel formerly known as Russia Today that Mr. Navalny’s aides said had dispatched Ms. Butina to his prison, did not respond to a query about the visit.