“They put me in solitary confinement, it’s like being in a tiny concrete kennel measuring 2.5 by 3 meters.” Alexei Navalny, the most ardent critic of President Vladimir Putin, in a post on Twitter through his lawyers made it known that he had been “punished” by the authorities of the prison where he is held, the penal colony IK-6 in Melekhovo of Vladimir, in approximately 250 km (155 miles) east of Moscow. The reason for the punishment, according to what he said, is derisory: not having buttoned the top button of his prison uniform, several sizes too small for him. Accusations, he argues, invented as a pretext to incarcerate him in order to counter his political ambitions.
The dissident described the condition in which he finds himself: “Most of the time it is unbearable in there because it is scolded and wet. There is water on the floor. I took the beach version: it is very hot and there is hardly any air, ”he wrote. “The window is tiny, but the walls are too thick for any airflow – even the cobwebs don’t move. There is no ventilation. At night you lie there and feel like a fish on the shore. At 5 in the morning they take away your mattress and pillow. There is an iron table, an iron bench, a sink, a hole in the floor and two cameras on the ceiling ».
Navalny, who returned to Russia in 2021 from Germany, where he was treated for what Western lab tests have shown to be an attempt to poison him in Siberia, is serving an 11-and-a-half-year sentence after being found guilty of violating his liberty. supervised, fraud and indictment of accusations.