Footage 'showing Putin foe Alexei Navalny in jail' is leaked to strongly pro-Kremlin media

A pro-Kremlin TV station has aired video purporting to show Alexei Navalny walking around in jail in an effort to expose his ‘lies’ about needing urgent medical attention.

The opposition leader this week went on hunger strike in prison, and says guards are depriving him of sleep by waking him eight times a night, and refusing him a doctor’s visit for acute back and leg pain.

He claims to have lost more than 17 pounds before he started refusing food.

But the CCTV purports to show him, with a shaven head, walking around freely and ‘arguing’ with a guard on March 26.

The footage appeared in pro-Kremlin Life media, and, if genuine, could only have been released with top-level clearance. 

Pro-Kremlin media said the footage shows Alexei Navalny, 44, arguing with a prison guard as other inmates stand around them. Comes after claims by Navalny that he has gone on hunger strike after being refused medical treatment for acute pain

In the footage which purports to show Navalny he is seen walking around his a cup in his hand as he appears to be in discussion with a prison guard wearing a blue camouflage uniform

The report claims that Navalnyis seen as a ‘martyr’ on his and supporters’ social media but the video shows his condition as ‘very different from what he complains about’.

Strongly loyalist outlet Life stated: ‘Views of the video from the penal colony – and conversations with informed interlocutors – convince us that Alexei Navalny is not a sick sufferer for the democratic faith, but an impudent simulator who also managed to pick up the habits of thieves.’

The video, it claims, shows the convict walking around the Pokrov penitentiary ‘with a sedate, confident gait and a cup of tea in his hands’.

On the same day he had posted on social media that it was ‘hard and painful to get out of bed’ and that could not feel his right leg, said Life.

Judging by the video, ‘he feels neither remorse nor fear that his lies may be exposed’.

His pose ‘with his hand in his pocket’ shows him not as a ‘persecuted opposition leader’ as portrayed in the West but his feeling of ‘superiority to the uniformed guard’ and other inmates.

Navalny is seen in a vast cell which Life says currently houses 16 inmates, and has many empty bunk beds. 

Footage which purportedly shows Navalny walking around his prison wing unaided 

Leaked details from his prison show he had received six reprimands by 29 March, said Life. 

The leak appeared to be a hit back against Western leaders’ pressure on Vladimir Putin to release him.

Life alleges that cell mates are receiving money assumed to be from Navalny supporters – or the West – as a way of making them act as his ‘servants’ in the colony in Vladimir region.

‘He underwent an MRI examination, which did not reveal anything serious for his age,’ claimed Life.

‘However, he still continues to complain on social networks about his poor health and, on this basis, demands new concessions from the colony’s administration.

‘For example, as a special medical dispensation he wanted – and received – a gymnastics or yoga mat.’

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny looks at photographers standing behind a glass of the cage in the Babuskinsky District Court in Moscow in February 2021

Alexei Navalny and his wife Yulia, the couple have two children together

He was given a special bed and ear plugs, it was reported.

‘Navalny is visited by lawyers every day,’ said the report.

‘And such meetings can last up to four hours, with each of his four lawyers.’

A day earlier, Navalny complained about a prison visit by state sponsored RT channel present Maria Butina, who earlier spent time in jail in the United States as a foreign agent.

Navalny branded her ‘a parasite and servant of the thieves in power’ in the Kremlin.

The opposition leader claims his jailing is a political vendetta by Putin.