Alexei Navalny spent his final days in a hellish penal colony in the Arctic Circle, where prisoners are tortured with beatings and electric shocks.
The opposition leader died during his 19-year sentence at the FKU IK-3 facility, known as Polar Wolf, which houses more than 1,000 of the country's worst criminals – along with a handful of political prisoners who dared to attack Putin. to challenge regimes.
Polar Wolf is a Soviet-era prison and is considered one of the toughest in Russia.
Aside from the brutal treatment of the inmates inside, the penal colony is located in the Arctic, 1,900 kilometers northeast of Moscow, where temperatures plunge below -25°C.
Navalny was moved there in December from Penal Colony 6, 150 miles outside Moscow. He said it took 20 days to reach FKU IK-3.
A view of the entrance to the prison colony in the town of Charp in the Yamal-Nenetsk region, about 1,900 kilometers northeast of Moscow, Tuesday, January 23, 2024
Alexei Navalny (pictured) died in the brutal penal colony FKU IK-3, a Soviet-era prison camp
A woman walks towards the entrance to the IK-3 penal colony, where Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny died while serving his sentence. The prison is located in the settlement of Kharp in the Yamal-Nenets region
Former inmates have described how FKU IK-3 is designed to make prisoners feel “completely hopeless” and suppress “any rebellious spirit.” The facility in Charp, part of the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service, can accommodate up to 1,085 people.
Navalny's lawyers recently claimed that the penal colony's guards tried to “destroy Navalny's health by all means and forces.”
Vadim Kobzev, a lawyer for Navalny, said he lost 7kg in weight and was “intentionally” infected with an unknown acute viral respiratory disease in a hellhole punishment cell.
Navalny “did not receive proper medication” and was instead “treated with huge doses of antibiotics that should not have been used,” Kobzev said.
“These actions can only be viewed as an open strategy to destroy Navalny’s health by all means and means,” the lawyer said.
Other forms of punishment and torture are said to include lining up prisoners in the freezing outdoors and then firing a powerful water cannon at them.
Prisoner's rights activist Olga Romanova reported one prisoner's claim that he had to wait in line outside for up to 40 minutes in “light clothing” in midwinter.
They are ordered not to move, and if a single person so much as rubs their hands together to warm themselves, “the whole group was doused with water.”
“In the spring there was a new torture.” Mosquitoes and biting flies. If you moved a hand, the water came. “They just doused the whole group with a water cannon,” Romanova said, according to Radio Free Europe.
About 60 km (40 miles) north of the Arctic Circle, Polar Wolf was founded in the 1960s as part of the former Gulag system of Soviet forced labor camps, according to the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper.
A group of officials visit the prison colony in the town of Kharp, where the temperature is expected to drop to minus 28°C next week
A group of officers go to a prison colony in the town of Charp in the Yamal-Nenetsk region, about 1,900 kilometers (1,200 miles) northeast of Moscow
Strict Soviet-era rules dictate that prisoners' families and lawyers are not informed of their whereabouts until they reach their destination
A group of prisoners sit during classes in the prison colony where Alexei Navalny's staff say he was found
Little has been reported about the general living conditions of prisoners who are not held in solitary confinement. Conditions at other facilities suggest they sleep in cramped rooms with cots.
It is also unlikely that prisoners will be provided with clothing sturdy enough to withstand the freezing temperatures.
In January, Navalny joked about the polar conditions on the messaging app Telegram, quipping sarcastically: “Nothing invigorates you like a walk on Yamal at 6:30 in the morning.”
“Even at this temperature, you can only walk for more than half an hour if you manage to grow a new nose, new ears and new fingers,” he wrote of the -25°C temperatures.
Navalny mentioned a scene in the 2015 film The Revenant in which Leonardo DiCaprio seeks refuge in the carcass of a horse.
“I don’t think that would have worked here.” “A dead horse would freeze to death in 15 minutes,” said Navalny. “We need an elephant here, a hot elephant, a fried one.”
The dark jokes were typical of Navalny's refusal to crumble in the face of unimaginable adversity. He once described one of the colonies where he was held as “a friendly concentration camp.”
The punishment cells in which inmates are kept in solitary confinement are said to be tiny – with only a hole in the floor for a toilet.
And the concrete walkways used by prisoners are about 11 steps long, three steps wide and have metal bars.
Former inmates at similar facilities have also reported that guards frequently administered electric shocks and beatings.
Ukrainian filmmaker Oleh Sentsov, who was imprisoned in the IK-8 “Polar Bear” prison for five years, said: “As soon as you cross the threshold, you are told that you are in purgatory, where you have no rights, and that There is also no one to complain to.
Navalny, pictured with his wife Yulia in happier times, fought against official corruption and staged massive anti-Kremlin protests – drawing the Kremlin's wrath
“Beatings, humiliation, electric shocks, being held naked or in wet clothes in a cold cell – but that’s not the worst of it…” You may be locked in the fetal position in an iron box, where you can barely breathe and urinate on yourself must. They routinely threaten to rape you if they bully you.'
In Penal Colony No. 6, where Navalny was previously held, rape and violence against prisoners were commonplace, while guards were merciless in their sadism.
While Navalny was held there, authorities punished him for minor violations.
He was punished once for washing his hands six minutes earlier than planned, and another time for undoing the top button of his shirt.
Since his first detention in January 2021, Navalny has been in solitary confinement in both Penal Colony No. 6 and the Polar Wolf facility, which is often used to punish rule-breakers in the Russian prison system.
After his final court appearance on Thursday – hours before his death – a post on Navalny's X account said he was again placed in solitary confinement.
Jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is dead, the prison authorities of the Yamal-Nenets region where he served his sentence said on Friday
Russian news agencies announced Navalny's death – citing the Siberian prison service where he was serving his sentence – sparking shock and anger around the world, with world leaders quick to point the finger at Russian President Vladimir Putin (today in Russia shown).
Online news outlet SOTA reported that Thursday's court hearing was called after an “altercation” with a prison officer who tried to confiscate Navalny's pen.
Navalny wrote later Thursday that he had been ordered to spend 15 days in solitary confinement.
“The Yamal prison decided to break Vladimir's record, flatter and please the Moscow authorities. They just gave me 15 days of solitary confinement,” he wrote on X.
“This is the fourth solitary confinement in less than two months that I have been with them,” he added.
On one of the last occasions he was seen in early 2023, Navalny had just emerged from his 11th term of detention in a 10-by-7-foot concrete “pencil” with only a hole in the floor for a toilet.
Looking even more emaciated and unwell than usual, he was suffering from a serious lung infection that he contracted after prison officials forced him to share a cell with a tramp who had a contagious respiratory disease – and then refused to admit him treat him when he became ill.