Aleksei A. Navalny, Russia's most prominent opposition leader, published a letter on Tuesday describing an arduous transfer to his new penal colony in the Arctic, the first time his supporters had heard from him in three weeks.
Mr. Navalny's comments, posted on his social media accounts and written with a heavy dose of irony and humor, underscored his good humor and appeared designed to allay the concerns of allies who have been growing since his sudden disappearance Public concerns about his health and status brought attention to December 5th.
“I am your new Father Frost,” Mr. Navalny wrote, referring to the Russian version of Santa Claus. “I have a sheepskin coat, a hat with earflaps; I was due to get felt boots soon, and I grew a beard during the 20-day transit.”
But he added: “The main thing is that I now live above the Arctic Circle.”
Mr. Navalny, 47, is a long-time opponent of President Vladimir V. Putin who has faced increasingly harsh punishments over the past year. His transfer to one of Russia's high-security “special regime” penal colonies had been expected since September, when he lost an appeal against the 19-year sentence he is serving.
However, his lawyers and allies were not informed in advance that he would be moved, raising fears and speculation about his health as the legal team was unable to contact him.
Mr. Navalny has been detained since his arrest in January 2021 at a Moscow airport, where he arrived after spending months recovering from a nerve agent poisoning in Germany. Mr Navalny and Western governments have accused the Kremlin of poisoning, an accusation Russian officials have denied.
Mr Navalny's new penal colony in the town of Charp is a former site of a Gulag labor camp and one of the most remote in Russia. It is surrounded by tundra and polar mountains. Icy, dark winters give way to lively summers with clouds of mosquitoes. Daylight is in short supply, a fact he alluded to in his letter Tuesday.
“When I look out the window, it’s first night, then evening,” Mr. Navalny said. “Then it’s night again.”
Mr Navalny said he had not yet seen much of his new Arctic permafrost environment, but he had noticed that prison guards there were different from their counterparts in central Russia. They wore warm gloves and felt boots, carried machine guns and were supported by “these very beautiful fluffy German Shepherds,” he said.
A trip from Moscow to Charp takes more than 40 hours by train, which leaves every other day. But Mr. Navalny described a more complicated 20-day journey through the Russian prison system.
He traveled from his penal colony in the nearby Vladimir region to Moscow, then to Chelyabinsk and Yekaterinburg in the Urals, then north via Kirov to Vorkuta before finally arriving in Charp on Saturday, his letter said.
“I didn’t expect anyone to find me here until mid-January,” he said.
“I was very surprised when the cell doors opened yesterday with the words: 'There's a lawyer for you.'”