- Alexei Navalny, Putin’s main domestic critic, is serving a two-and-a-half-year sentence in a Russian prison.
- He was convicted of missing parole hearings while recovering from Novichok poisoning.
- He spoke of the arrest in an Instagram post on Monday, comparing the arrest to a “concentration camp”.
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Alexei Navalny first revealed details about her life in the Russian prison, reporting surveillance 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and comparing her to a concentration camp.
Navalny, President Vladimir Putin’s chief domestic critic, began a 30-month sentence in prison after being sentenced on February 2 for missing parole meetings abroad.
The activist had been receiving specialized medical care in Berlin after being poisoned by nervous agent Novichok in August, for which he blamed Putin. He was arrested immediately after returning to Russia in January.
Navalny’s whereabouts after his sentence were unknown until Russian authorities announced on February 28 that they had sent Navalny to Penal Colony No. 2 in the Vladimir region of Russia, east of Moscow.
There was no news of Navalny until Monday, when he broke the silence on Instagram and described his situation.
“I must admit that the Russian prison system has managed to surprise me. I didn’t think it was possible to build a concentration camp just 100 kilometers from Moscow,” he said.
“Video cameras are everywhere, everyone is watched, and at the slightest infraction, they make a report. I think someone there read Orwell’s 1984 and said, ‘Yes, cool. Let’s do this.'”
Navalny said that at night he was woken up every hour by a prison guard holding a video camera, checking that he had not escaped.
“Three things never cease to amaze me,” he added. “The stars in the sky above us, the categorical imperative within us and the incredible feeling when you run your palm over your newly shaved head.”
Reports detail how prisoners in Russia are often tortured and subjected to inhuman treatment.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on 30 June.
Alexei Druzhinin / TASS via Getty
Konstantin Kotov, a former penal colony convict # 2 who was released in December, told CNN: “From the first minutes you are here, you are under mental and moral pressure.”
He continued: “You are forced to do things you would never do in normal life. You are forbidden to speak to other inmates. They force you to learn the list of employee names. You stand up all day, from 6 am to 10 pm You are not allowed to sit. They do not allow you to read, they do not allow you to write a letter. It may last two weeks, it may last three weeks. “
Kotov said that Penal Colony No. 2 ordinances often punish prisoners by hitting a chair leg on the bottom of their feet.
Navalny said in his Instagram post that he had not yet seen violence between guards and prisoners, but he believed in reports of mistreatment, considering what he described as the “tense stance of convicts”.
Kotov added that he slept in a room with 50 to 60 metal bunks and spent most days watching Russian state TV. “This is torture for TV,” he told CNN.
Major protests erupted across Russia following Navalny’s arrest, but they have died in recent weeks after a crackdown by the authorities.
Thousands of people were arrested, including Navalny’s wife, Yulia Navalnaya.