Moscow’s Complaint about Russian’s Treatment in US Prison Highlights How Much Worse His Situation Would Be in a Russian One, Feldman Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 3 – The Russian embassy in Washington last week handed a note to the US Department of State complaining about what it says is the failure of American penal officials to address the health needs of Bogdana Osipova, a Kaliningrader, who has been exposed to the coronavirus and demanding an immediate correction of the situation.

            In reporting this, Kaliningrad journalist Mikhail Feldman says that “it would seem that Kaliningraders should be grateful to the Russian foreign ministry for its touching concern about their fellow landsman.”  But instead, they see it for a propaganda ploy given how Osipova would be treated if he were in a Russian prison (region.expert/prisons/).

            As many residents of the Russian exclave know, “a system for identifying the symptoms of the coronavirus infection COVID-10, hospitalizing the infected and quarantining them from their neighbors was put in place in the jails of the United States from the beginning of the pandemic,” Feldman points out.

            Osipov was put in such a quarantine after prison officials determined that some of those in his cell had the coronavirus. He was put there to protect him from infection because the US has launched a program of mass testing of prisoners for the virus so that even those who are un-symptomatic will not spread the disease.

            What would have happened to Osipov if he had been in a RUSSIAN prison?  He would not have been likely to have been given any assistance at all since “the leaders of the penal system there are limiting themselves to declarations that there are no victims of the virus in Russian prisons and investigation isolation facilities.”

            The Russian system isn’t conducting any tests. “There is simply no possibility” of that given such attitudes. That means the virus if it enters the system will spread ultimately reaching almost all those now being held behind bars.  And people who have recently been released from behind bars in Russia know the virus is already there.

            Nikolay Sentsov, who was recently released from a Kaliningrad detention center after serving almost three years in connection with the regime’s case against the Baltic Avantgarde of the Russian Resistance (BARS), says there are many infected people behind bars – and their numbers are growing because nothing is being done.

            The epidemiological situation in American prisons is worrisome, so worrisome that officials are releasing some inmates convicted of non-violent crimes. That is happening in other countries as well, Feldman says, noting that even Iran, in an unprecedented move, released 85,000 prisoners lest they fall victim to the coronavirus.

            However, perhaps to no one’s surprise, Russia is following its own “special path,” denying there is a problem and refusing to release even those who are already terribly sick let alone others who should not be given a possible death sentence by remaining incarcerated with the infected.

            Despite the intervention of the Russian embassy, Osipova is unlikely to be released although he is being protected from infection. He is accused of the most serious crimes – kidnapping children and illegally. But her fellow Kaliningraders now in Russian detention for far less serious actions have no hope of either.

            The fact that Moscow is expressing concern about a Kalinigrader in an American jail while doing nothing for other Kaliningraders in Russian jails shows that it isn’t in fact concerned about anything more than making propaganda points, Feldman says. That is obvious to everyone, and so Moscow’s latest complain is backfiring on the Russian capital.