Aleksei A. Navalny, Russia’s most outstanding opposition chief, printed a letter on Tuesday describing an arduous switch to his new penal colony within the Arctic, the primary time his supporters had heard from him in three weeks.
Mr. Navalny’s feedback, posted on his social network accounts and written with a heavy dose of irony and humor, highlighted his good spirits and appeared supposed to assuage issues amongst allies who had grown anxious about his well being and standing since his sudden disappearance from the general public eye on Dec. 5.
“I am your new Father Frost,” Mr. Navalny wrote, referring to the Russian model of Santa Claus. “I have a sheepskin coat, a hat with earflaps; I should get felt boots soon, and I have grown a beard during the 20-day transit,” he stated.
“But the main thing is that I know live above the Arctic Circle.”
Mr. Navalny, 47, is a longtime antagonist of President Vladimir V. Putin who has been topic to more and more harsh punishment over the previous yr. His switch to considered one of Russia’s high-security “special regime” penal colonies had been anticipated since September, when he misplaced an attraction towards the 19-year sentence he’s serving.
However his attorneys and allies weren’t notified upfront that he could be moved, raising fears and speculations about his well being after authorized group was unable to contact him.
Mr. Navalny has been in custody since his detention in January 2021 at a Moscow airport, the place he had arrived after spending months in Germany recovering from poisoning by a nerve agent. Mr. Navalny and Western governments have accused the Kremlin of the poisoning, a cost that Russian officers have denied.
A former web site of a Gulag labor camp, Mr. Navalny’s new penal colony, positioned within the city of Kharp, is among the most distant in Russia. It’s surrounded by tundra and polar mountains. Freezing darkish winters give strategy to brisk summers with clouds of mosquitoes. Daylight is scarce, a truth he alluded to in his letter Tuesday.
“When I look outside the window, first it’s night, then evening,” stated Mr. Navalny. “Then it’s night again.”
Mr. Navalny stated he had not seen a lot of his new Arctic permafrost environment but, however that he had seen that jail guards there have been totally different than their colleagues in central Russia. Carrying heat mittens and felt boots, they carried machine weapons and have been aided by “those very beautiful fluffy shepherd dogs,” he stated.
A visit to Kharp from Moscow takes greater than 40 hours on a practice, which departs each second day. However Mr. Navalny described a extra sophisticated 20-day journey by means of the Russian jail system.
He went to Moscow from his penal colony within the close by Vladimir Area, then to Chelyabinsk and Yekaterinburg within the Ural Mountains after which by means of Kirov up north to Vorkuta earlier than lastly arriving in Kharp on Saturday, in line with his letter.
“I did not expect anyone would find me here until mid-January,” he stated.
“I was very surprised then when yesterday, the cell’s doors were opened with the words: ‘There is a lawyer for you.’”
