Skinny. Very skinny. The hollow face, the shaved hair. At the Moscow court, the first images of Alexei Navalny, exhausted by illness and hunger strike, were transmitted on a monitor, in the courtroom, during the videocall from the Pokrov penal colony in the hearing of the Moscow court where the Russian dissident is accused of defamation of a WWII veteran. «I weigh 72 kilos, like in the seventh grade»: Navalny said addressing his wife, Yulia, present in the courtroom. “They took me to the sauna yesterday to make me look good. If I take off my clothes I look bad, like a skeleton. ‘
It is the first time that Navalny has been seen publicly since he gave up the hunger strike, which began on March 31 in protest against the lack of medical treatment for the severe back and leg pains that torment him, and which interrupted the April 23 at the request of his treating doctors.
The hearing did not last long: the Moscow district court rejected the Russian opponent’s appeal against the sentence to pay a fine of 850,000 rubles, about 9,500 euros at the then exchange rate, as stated for defamation. Navalny had in fact been sued for a tweet in which he had lashed out against a “pro-Kremlin” video promoting the reform that canceled the limit of two consecutive presidential terms for Putin. The dissident had called all those who had participated in the film “traitors”: among them, a 94-year-old veteran, and offending a person who fought against the Nazi invaders in Russia is considered unacceptable. Navalny argued that his words were not addressed directly to the veteran, and that the trial is only a move by the authorities to put him in a bad light. It was not heard.