THE NEW YORK TIMES Alexei NavalniRussia's most prominent opposition leader released a letter on Tuesday describing an arduous transfer to his new Arctic penal colony. This was the first time his followers had heard from him in three weeks.
Navalni's comments, posted on his social media accounts and written with a heavy dose of irony and humor, underscored his good humor and appeared intended to allay the concerns of allies who have been worried about him since his sudden disappearance Health and his status made public attention on December 5th.
“I’m your new guy Ded Moroz“Wrote Navalni, referring to the Russian version of Santa Claus. “I have a sheepskin coat, a hat with earflaps; I’m supposed to get felt boots soon and I’ve grown a beard during the 20 day transit.”
But he added: “The main thing is that I now live above the Arctic Circle.”
Navalni, 47, is a longtime opponent of the president Wladimir Putin, which has faced increasingly harsh punishments over the past year. His transfer to one of Russia's highsecurity “special regime” penal colonies had been expected since September, when he lost an appeal against the 19year sentence he is serving.
However, his lawyers and allies were not informed in advance of his transfer, raising fears and speculation about his health after the legal team failed to contact him. His ability to write a letter from a new prison suggested that Navalny would likely remain a fixture in Russian public life as the country heads toward another presidential election — an election that Putin is expected to win, although it is unlikely there is real competition.
Navalni was missing for three weeks before being held in an Arctic prison. Photo: Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP
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Navalni has been detained since his arrest in January 2021 at a Moscow airport, where he arrived after spending months recovering in Germany from poisoning by a substance that affects the nervous system. Navalny and Western governments have accused the Kremlin of poisoning, a claim Russian authorities have denied.
The new Navalni penal colony in the city of Charp is one of the most remote in Russia, having once been a labor camp Gulag. Known as the “Arctic Wolf” colony, it is surrounded by tundra and polar mountains. Dark, freezing winters give way to cool summers with clouds of mosquitoes. Daylight is in short supply, a fact he mentioned in his letter Tuesday.
“I don't say 'Hohoho,' but I say 'Ohohoh' when I look out the window,” Navalni said, “where I can see that it's night, then night, then again Night.” .”
Navalni said he had not yet seen much of his new permafrost (permanently frozen layer of land) environment in the Arctic, but he did notice that the prison guards were different from their counterparts in central Russia. They wore warm gloves and felt boots, carried machine guns and were supported by “these beautiful, fluffy German Shepherds,” he said.
A 2019 video report about the prison by a city news outlet said it had a library with 8,000 books, a store, a church and an inmate chef who liked to bake large cakes.
A trip from Moscow to Charp takes more than 40 hours on the train, which runs every two days. But Navalni described a more complicated 20day journey through the Russian prison system.
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From his penal colony in the neighboring Vladimir region, he went to Moscow, then to Chelyabinsk and Yekaterinburg in the Urals, and then to Kirov to Vorkuta, before finally arriving in Charp on Saturday, his letter says.
“I didn’t expect anyone to find me here until midJanuary,” he said. “I was very surprised yesterday when the cell doors were opened with the words: 'There is a lawyer for you'.”
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