Navalny in punishment cell forever: Supporters
President Vladimir Putin’s regime is trying to break the will of Alexei Navalny by keeping the jailed opposition leader in a ‘‘dog pen’’ isolation cell for weeks on end and denying him family visits, his allies have warned.
Navalny, 46, believes the campaign against him is partly an act of revenge for his criticism of Putin’s war in Ukraine and for his launch of a ‘‘trade union’’ for prisoners.
Since mid-August, the anticorruption activist has spent 67 days in isolation at the IK-6 security prison where he is being held in the Vladimir region, east of Moscow.
That total is the result of seven spells in a small isolation cell Navalny describes as ‘‘unbearable’’. His latest punishment, this month, was an 11-day stay in the cell for failing to clean a yard properly and for addressing a prison guard incorrectly,
Navalny has described the 3m by 3.5m cell as a concrete dog pen. ‘‘Most of the time it is unbearable because it is cold and damp,’’ he wrote in August. ‘‘There is water on the floor. I have the beach version: very hot inside and hardly any air. The windowpane is tiny and the walls are too thick to allow for any ventilation - even the cobwebs never move.’’
Other punishments were for purported infringements of prison rules such as leaving a button undone, failure to keep his hands behind his back while walking and refusing to wash a fence. On three occasions alleged violations involved him citing a European Court of Human Rights ruling in 2021 that he be released immediately.
Navalny, a father of two, will now be kept permanently in a PKT, or ‘‘celltype room’’, because of his numerous alleged infringements. He will have slightly more rights than in the small isolation cell but far fewer than other inmates.
Kira Yarmysh, his spokeswoman, said a PKT was ‘‘like a punishment cell, only not for 15 days but forever’’.
While being held in the cell, Navalny will still receive four-hour appointments with relatives but not the thriceyearly three-day meetings in which dormitory inmates can stay with family members in the penal colony.
In comments posted to social media, Navalny said the decision demonstrated the ‘‘indescribable barbarity’’ of Kremlin handlers who decide his fate.
He said he had been promised a long meeting with relatives within six months of being moved to the security prison from another penal colony in June. A meeting was finally agreed for this month but was then cancelled.