Russia
The imprisoned Russian opposition leader wrote on
Agence France Presse
Wed 27 Dec 2023 00:34 GMT
Jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny said he was “doing well” after a “quite strenuous” 20-day transfer to a penal colony beyond the Arctic Circle.
The Kremlin critic's whereabouts had been unknown for more than two weeks, but he is in a penal colony in Russia's far north and has been visited by his lawyer, his supporters said.
“Do not worry about me. I'm doing well. I am totally relieved that I finally made it,” Navalny wrote on X on Tuesday after arriving at the colony called Polar Wolf.
Alexei Navalny discovered in remote Arctic penal colony
“I'm still in a good mood, as befits a Santa Claus,” he said, referring to his winter attire of a sheepskin coat and fur hat, as well as the beard he grew during his transport.
The U.S. State Department said it remained “deeply concerned about Mr. Navalny’s well-being and the conditions of his unjustified detention.”
Navalny mobilized large anti-government protests before being jailed in 2021 after surviving an assassination attempt by poisoning.
He spent most of his imprisonment in the IK-6 penal colony in the Vladimir region, 250 kilometers east of Moscow.
In August, a court extended his prison sentence to 19 years on extremism charges and ruled that he would be moved to a tougher “special regime” prison for particularly dangerous prisoners.
Allies said his transfer could be related to the upcoming presidential election in March, which has seen many Kremlin critics jailed or fleeing.
“It was clear from the beginning that the authorities wanted to isolate Alexei, especially in the run-up to the elections,” said Ivan Zhdanov, who heads Navalny’s anti-corruption foundation.
Navalny was sent to “one of the most northern and remote colonies of all,” Zhdanov added.
According to the regional prison service website, the colony was built in the 1960s on the site of a camp that was part of the Stalin-era labor camp network known as the Gulag. It can accommodate up to 1,020 prisoners.
Inmates are tasked with processing reindeer skins.
A key difference from his previous prison camp is that it will take much longer for all the letters to reach Navalny.
Navalny posted on X that he arrived at the Arctic penal colony in the village of Kharp on Saturday and was visited by his lawyer on Monday.
Kharp lies above the Arctic Circle, over 1,900 kilometers (1,200 miles) northeast of Moscow. Its name means “northern lights” in the Nenets language and is caught in the darkness of the polar night in the middle of winter.
Navalny wrote from his window: “I see the night, then the evening and then the night again.”
Prisoner transports in Russia can take weeks as prisoners are taken by train to facilities far away.
“I didn’t expect anyone to find me here before mid-January,” Navalny wrote, adding that he saw little of his surroundings except for a snow-covered side cell that served as a courtyard and a fence outside his window.
“Unfortunately there are no reindeer, but there are huge, fluffy and very beautiful sheepdogs,” he said.
Temperatures in Kharp are expected to drop to -26°C (-14.8°F) in the coming days.
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