The imprisoned Russian opponent Alexei Navalny assured this Tuesday on social networks that he is “fine,” after being transferred to a penal colony in the Russian Arctic.
The trip to his new prison lasted 20 days and was “quite tiring,” as he declared on the X network. “But I'm in a good mood, like Santa Claus,” added Navalni, referring to his beard that grew during the journey and the harsh winter clothing he wears, adapted to polar temperatures.
“In any case, don't worry about me. I'm fine. I'm relieved to have finally arrived,” he added.
His relatives announced on Monday that they had located him in a penal colony in Jarp, in Yamalia-Nenetsia, a remote region of northern Russia.
Navalny was transferred after announcing a campaign against the 2024 re-election of President Vladimir Putin, in power since 2000.
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The charismatic anti-corruption activist and sworn enemy of President Vladimir Putin is serving a 19-year prison sentence for “extremism.” He was arrested in January 2021 upon his return to Russia, after recovering in Germany from a poisoning that he claims was orchestrated by the Kremlin.
The 47-year-old opponent had disappeared at the beginning of December from the prison colony in the Vladimir region, 250 km from Moscow.
Navalny revealed that he arrived on Saturday at the IK-3 penitentiary in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District after a 20-day trip from Moscow to the town of Jarp. with stops in several cities, including the capital of the Urals, Yekaterinburg, and Vorkuta.
He stated that it was a discreet trip organized according to “such a strange itinerary” that he did not plan to be located by those close to him before mid-January.
“That's why I was surprised when they opened the cell door yesterday and told me: 'There is a lawyer here for you,'” Navalni said.
Navalni highlighted that the prison is located within the Arctic Circle and that when he looks out the window of his cell “at first it is night, then afternoon comes and night again.”
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The town of Jarp, which has about 6,000 inhabitants, is located almost 2,000 kilometers from Moscow or about 45 hours by train from the Russian capital.
Jarp is less than 50 kilometers from Salekhard, the administrative capital of this territory that has an area larger than that of France, but is populated by only half a million inhabitants.
According to one of his collaborators in exile, Iván Zhdanov, The prison is named after “Polar Wolf”, considered one of the most distant prisons from civilization in all of Russia.
“Escape is practically impossible. On the one hand, hundreds of kilometers of tundra, on the other, the mountains of the Arctic Ural. That is why they lock up the most terrible criminals and serial killers there,” commented Ivan Vostrikov, a collaborator of the opposition in the Siberian region of Tyumen, on social networks.
EFE AND AFP
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