Kremlin critic Aleksei Navalny says he was instantly positioned in a punitive solitary confinement cell after ending a quarantine time period on the so-called Polar Wolf jail in Russia’s Arctic area the place he was transferred final month.
In a sequence of messages on X, previously Twitter, Navalny mentioned on January 9 a jail guard dominated that ”convict Navalny refused to introduce himself in response to format, didn’t reply to the academic work, and didn’t draw acceptable conclusions for himself” and due to this fact should spend seven days in solitary confinement.
Navalny added that not like in an everyday cell, the place inmates are allowed to have a stroll outdoors of the cell within the afternoon when it’s a bit hotter outdoors, within the punitive cell, such walks are at 6:30 a.m. in part of the world the place temperatures can fall to minus 45 levels Celsius or colder.
”I’ve already promised myself that I’ll attempt to go for a stroll it doesn’t matter what the climate is,” Navalny mentioned in an irony-laced sequence of eight posts, including that the cell-like websites for walks are ”11 steps from the wall and three steps to the wall” with an open sky lined with steel bars above.
”It is by no means been colder right here than -32 levels Celsius (-25 levels Fahrenheit). Even at that temperature you may stroll for greater than half an hour, however solely when you have time to develop a brand new nostril, ears, and fingers,” Navalny joked, evaluating himself with the character performed by Leonardo DiCaprio within the Revenant movie, who saved himself from freezing within the chilly by crawling contained in the carcass of a lifeless horse.
”Right here you want an elephant. A scorching and even roasted elephant. When you reduce open the stomach of a freshly roasted elephant and crawl inside, you may maintain heat for some time. However the place am I going to get a scorching, roasted elephant [here], particularly at 6:30 within the morning? So, I’ll proceed to freeze,” Navalny concludes in his sarcastic string of messages.
Navalny was transported in December to the infamous and distant jail, formally often called IK-3, however broadly known as Polar Wolf.
Some 2,000 kilometers northeast of Moscow, the jail holds about 1,050 of Russia’s most incorrigible prisoners.
Human rights activists say the jail holds serial killers, rapists, pedophiles, repeat offenders, and others convicted of probably the most severe crimes and serving sentences of 20 years or extra.
In some instances, like Navalny’s, the federal government sends convicts who’re broadly thought-about to be political prisoners there as properly. Platon Lebedev, a former enterprise companion of Mikhail Khodorkovsky who was convicted of tax evasion and different costs through the dismantling of the Yukos oil large, spent about two years at IK-3 within the mid-2000s.
The jail was based in 1961 at a former camp of dictator Josef Stalin’s Gulag community. The settlement of Kharp, with about 5,000 folks, largely gives housing and providers for jail employees and directors.
Navalny was sentenced to 19 years in jail in August 2023 on extremism costs, on high of earlier sentences for fraud. He says the costs are politically motivated, and human rights organizations acknowledged him as a political prisoner.
He has posed one of many most-serious threats to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who not too long ago introduced he’s working for reelection in March. Putin is predicted to simply win the election amid the continued sidelining of opponents and a clampdown on opposition and civil society that intensified after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
Navalny survived a poisoning with Novichok-type nerve agent in 2020 that he says was ordered by Putin. The Kremlin has denied any function in Navalny’s poisoning.