Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny said Monday that he was in the second penal colony in the village of Pokrov in Vladimir province. He posted the announcement on his Instagram account with a picture of him shaved and a cast that reveals the difficulties in the penal colony.
His lawyers said he was in an isolated cell where he would stay for two weeks after which he would be transferred to a regular cell. Navalny called the penal colony a “real concentration camp,” but noted that he was being treated “politely and friendly” and that he did not encounter violence.
“Hello everyone from the Division of Increased Supervision A,” Navalny began. “So far I have not encountered violence or a hint of it, although according to the tense poses of the prisoners, who stand tense and afraid to turn their heads, I easily believe the many stories here at Ik2 Pokrov.
Navalny described life in prison as a “strict agenda” in which it is forbidden to swear and talk about politics, which is strictly enforced. At night, a man in a “pea-colored coat” stands next to him and constantly photographs him on video, causing the opposition leader to wake up at any hour. Navalny also referred to Emanuel Kant’s quote from the work “Critique of Pure Reason” – which tells of the starry sky above and the moral law within us.
The opposition anti-corruption fund said that after two weeks of solitary confinement, Navalny would be transferred to a hut designated for sixty inmates where it would be forbidden to talk to each other.
Only today it was revealed in the Russian media that Navalny will want his sentence in the No. 2 penal colony in Pokrov. Until the last few days the place of imprisonment was confidential. The leader of the opposition has so far stayed in the “Rest of the Sailors” detention center, to which he was sent when he arrived in Moscow from Berlin after the medical rehabilitation procedure from the “Novichuk” poisoning. A Moscow court has sentenced him to two and a half years in prison, which was commuted to probation in the Yves Rocher case.