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Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny (archive image)
Photo: Moscow City Court Press Service / TASS / picture alliance / dpa
In his first interview from prison in Russia, Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny made serious accusations against the Russian authorities.
In an interview published on Wednesday with the New York Times, the opposition leader compared his penal colony in Pokrov, 100 kilometers east of Moscow, with a Chinese labor camp and spoke of a kind of brainwashing he was being subjected to.
Navalny told the New York Times that the days of exhausting work in Soviet gulags were over. Instead, "psychological violence" is now being used against the prisoners. He is forced to watch eight hours a day, state television that is loyal to the Kremlin. However, he is not allowed to read or write. The guards also woke inmates when they fell asleep. His fellow inmates, however, didn't bother him, said Navalny. He even had "fun" with them.
"You may imagine tattooed musclemen with steel-crowned teeth fighting knife fights to get the best bed by the window," Navalny said.
The reality in his penal colony is different.
“You have to imagine something like a Chinese labor camp, where everyone is running in line and video cameras are hanging everywhere.
There is constant control and a culture of spying. "
Navalny collapsed on August 20, 2020 on a flight from Tomsk in Siberia to Moscow.
Two days later, the opposition politician, still in a coma, was brought to Berlin Charité for treatment.
According to analyzes by Western laboratories, Navalny was poisoned with a chemical nerve agent from the Novitschok group developed in the Soviet Union.
After receiving treatment in Germany, Navalny was arrested on his return to Russia in January and later sentenced to more than two years in a camp for alleged violations of probation conditions.
In the "NYT" interview, the opposition was confident that Russia was heading into a future without head of state Vladimir Putin.
"Sooner or later this mistake will be corrected and Russia will embark on a democratic, European path of development," said Navalny.
"Simply because that's what people want."
Navalny renewed his criticism of the US and European governments for their sanctions against Russia.
These would hit the Russian people harder than those in power.
nek / AFP
