Imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny assured on social networks that he is fineThese are his first words from his new prison in the Arctic Circle, where he reemerged on Monday after missing almost three weeks. “Do not worry about me. I am good. “I am very happy to have achieved my goal,” he says in a letter posted on his Telegram channel.
Navalny announced that he arrived at the IK-3 prison in the Yamalo-Nenets autonomous region on Saturday. 20 day trip from Moscow To the town of Jarp, with stops in various cities, including Yekaterinburg, the capital of the Urals, and Vorkuta, home of one of the most feared Soviet GULAGs. He admitted that the transfer, known as “Etapirovanie” in Russia, was “quite tiring”, but added that his mood was “Whatever, it’s perfect”.
“I didn’t expect someone to find me until mid January. That’s why I was so surprised when the door opened in the afternoon with the sign ‘Your lawyer has arrived’. He said you have lost sight of me and some of you are even worried about me. Thank you very much for your support!” he explained.
Navalny highlighted the prison Located within the Arctic Circle and when he looks out the window of his cell “at first it is night, then the afternoon comes and it is night again.” Opposition lawyers, who located their clients the day before, have not contacted the opposition since December 5, alarming their co-religionists and Western prime ministers.
thousands of kilometers
Town of Jarp with a population of approximately 6,000 Almost 2,000 kilometers from Moscow or about 45 hours by train From the Russian capital. Jarp is located less than 50 kilometers from Salekhard, the administrative capital of a region larger than France but home to only half a million people.
According to one of his collaborators in exile, Iván Zhdanov, the name of the prison comes from ‘Arctic Wolf’. One of the prisons farthest from civilization From all over Russia and built on the basis of the GULAG. “Escape is almost impossible. Hundreds of kilometers of tundra on one side, and the Arctic Ural mountains on the other. That’s why they imprison the most terrible criminals and serial killers there,” commented Iván Vostrikov, an opposition collaborator in Siberia’s Tyumen region, on social networks. Platon Lebedev, one of the main managers of the nationalized oil company Yukos, spent part of his sentence in that prison. permanent ice zone (permafrost).
Ten days ago, the Russian Penitentiary Service (FSIN) admitted that Navalny was transferred from the prison in the Vladimir region where he was serving his sentence “in accordance with the decision made by the Moscow City Court on August 4.” New 19-year prison sentence for extremism. Navalny is almost done 30 years imprisonment He was transferred for various crimes after he announced that he was starting a campaign against the re-election of President Vladimir Putin, who has been in power since 2000, in 2024.