Dignified Defiance As Moscow Cops Raid Home of Opposition Doctor
Update: Feb 5, 2021 - 05:00 GMT
I’ve not heard back from Dr. Vassileva after trying to make contact 48 hours earlier. However, her daughter has appealed to people on Feb. 4 via social media:
“I ask: give us back mom. We need her, and she needs us. My brother and I are sure that there are no obstacles for mom to be with us. We want to live as before. Go to school calmly and so that my mother takes care of us. Give us back mom!”
A class act. A dignified resistance?
Russian opposition doctor, Anastasiya Vasilyeva, who was a guest on my podcast last year, treated Moscow cops to a spirited Beethoven piano recital as they set out to raid her flat. She was later arrested.
The raid is part of an ongoing crackdown following the jailing of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. Anastasia is head of the Russia's Doctors Alliance trade union and a close ally of Navalny. Last year she helped deliver PPE to frontline health workers as Covid19 hit hospitals.
Vasilyeva, who’s been frequently targeted by police in the past, played on even as an officer read out demands that she surrender her phone and computer for inspection. “You can applaud,” she said.
Anastasiya’s two children, both minors, were left behind as police detained her.
The video is chillingly reminiscent of the darker days of the former Soviet Union when dissidents were taken away by the KGB, often never to return.
Lawyer Dmitry Djulai said on Facebook that investigators later detained Vasilyeva for 48 hours in connection with alleged and unspecified violations of COVID-19 rules, Reuters reported.
To hear the podcast interview with Vasilyeva, click here