Alliance of Doctors leader detained and beaten for delivering protective equipment to doctors

Irina Mishina

Police officers stopped Anastasia Vasilyeva in her personal car on the 402nd km of the M-11 highway. The union leader and her assistants were traveling from Moscow in the direction of Veliky Novgorod.

“We brought protective equipment to the Novgorod region at the request of local doctors: goggles, respirators, antiseptics, gloves, disposable protective overalls,” said Ivan Konovalov , spokesman for the Alliance of Doctors , who was in the car all this time Anastasia Vasilyeva. - “On the border of the Novgorod region, 4 police cars stopped us. They explained this by the fact that Anastasia Vasilieva, having no registration in the Novgorod region, left her place of residence in Moscow and thereby violated the government decree. Protocols were drawn up for her under administrative articles 20.6.1 - this is "failure to comply with emergency rules" and in accordance with paragraph 1 of Article 19.3 of the Code of Administrative Offenses, it is "disobedience to the lawful order of a police officer."

However, we had in our hands a decree of the governor of the Novgorod region stating that the presence of representatives of another region on the territory of the region could be justified by working necessity. We showed the police this document, but this did not convince them. We were kept on the highway for 3 hours, then they demanded that we proceed to the police department of the Okulovsky district of the Novgorod region. Written explanations were required from Anastasia, but she considered that she had already explained everything and refused to go to the police department. Then she was very roughly detained. One plainclothes police officer hit her hard enough.

Anastasia became ill, we went to the store for water. When we left the store, about 20 employees of the Russian Guard were already waiting for us. Vasiliev was pushed into the UAZ by force and taken away in an unknown direction. But Okulovo is a small town, and we very quickly found Anastasia near the building of the local police department, where several healthy law enforcement officers tried to drag her by force. Man 10 against one woman! In this police department, Anastasia was kept for 13 hours without water and food. 13 hours later, a trial took place that imposed a fine on her. In total, Anastasia was fined 1,600 rubles for administrative offenses under Part 1 of Article 19.3 of the Code of Administrative Offenses (disobedience to the lawful order of a police officer) and under Article 20.6.1 of the Code of Administrative Offenses. This is a recently adopted article, it has recently entered into force. Its wording is “failure to fulfill the obligations stipulated by law to protect the population and territories from natural or man-made emergencies,” said Ivan Konovalov, representative of the Alliance of Doctors, to NI .

The most paradoxical in this situation is the manic interruption by the police, Rosguard and other law enforcement agencies to the doctors' discharge of their duty: helping colleagues in an emergency. The doctors of the Okulovskaya Central District Hospital and the Borovicheskaya Ambulance Station station had to drive to the Okulovsky OVD in order to receive the remedies that they requested from the Alliance of Doctors and without which their lives are at risk every day. The police did not allow the head of the Alliance of Doctors to the medical facility. Ironically, Anastasia Vasilieva and her colleagues from the Alliance of Doctors just fulfilled their duties "to protect the population and territories from emergency situations." That is, from the risk of infection of doctors with coronavirus. For which they paid.

Back to Moscow, police officers released Anastasia Vasilyeva’s car and her assistants unhindered.

The strangeness of executing government decrees is increasingly surprising even more than these decrees themselves.