Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny is being held in a prison camp in the Vladimir region of northeastern Moscow, known for its strict control of prisoners, a message posted on Instagram by the opposition politician confirmed on Monday.
Navalny’s exact location was unknown after his legal team said last week that he had been transferred from nearby Kolchugino prison and had not been told where he was being taken.
“I have to admit that the Russian prison system was able to surprise me,” posted Navalny on Instagram along with an old photo of himself with a short haircut.
“I had no idea that it was possible to organize a real concentration camp 100 km from Moscow.”
Navalny added that he was in Penal Colony No. 2 in the city of Pokrov, Vladimir, with a “newly shaved head”.
Navalny’s lawyer, Olga Mikhailova, confirmed that she was able to visit him in the colony.
In his post, Navalny wrote that “video cameras are everywhere, everyone is observed and at the slightest violation they make a report.
“I think someone up there read Orwell’s 1984 and said, ‘Yes, cool. Lets do this. Education through dehumanization ‘”, he added.
Navalny said he had yet to see any evidence of violence in the colony, but because of the “tense stance of the convicts”, he could “easily believe” previous reports of brutality.
Earlier this month, activist Konstantin Kotov, who spent nearly two years in the colony for violating protest rules, described to AFP an environment in which prisoners are not treated “like people”.
In February, the European human rights court told Moscow to release the opposition politician because he was concerned about his life, an appeal that Russia quickly rejected.
In his Instagram post, Navalny said that at night he was woken “every hour” by a man who took a photo of him and announced that the convict, who was “subject to escape”, was still in his cell.
In mid-January, the Kremlin critic was taken into police custody shortly after landing at a Moscow airport from Germany, where he had been treated for near-fatal poisoning with Soviet-era nerve toxin novichok.
The anti-bribery activist, who gained prominence for his investigations into the wealth of Russian elites, insists that the poisoning was carried out by order of President Vladimir Putin.
The Kremlin has repeatedly denied the claim, but has yet to launch an investigation into the attack.
Navalny’s arrest sparked a wave of protests across Russia and brutal police repression. The US and the EU have called for his release.
In a coordinated action this month, Washington and Brussels imposed sanctions on top Russian officials, while U.S. intelligence concluded that Moscow had orchestrated the poisoning attack on Navalny.