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Alexei Navalny at a court hearing in Russia (photo from June)
Photo: Vladimir Kondrashov / dpa
According to his own statements, the Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, who was imprisoned in Russia, was sent to a punishment cell for three days for minor violations of prison rules.
He tweeted through his lawyers that he had been fined for regularly not buttoning the top button of his prison uniform.
He also tried to persuade fellow prisoners to set up a union.
»The solitary confinement cell is a 2.5 x 3 meter concrete kennel.
It's unbearable in there most of the time because it's cold and damp.
There's water on the floor,' they said.
"I have the beach version - it's very hot there and there's almost no air."
The window is tiny, there is no ventilation.
'You lie there at night and feel like a fish out of water.
At 5am they take away your mattress and pillow (...) and lift up your bunk.
At 9 p.m. the bunk is lowered again and the mattress is returned.
There is an iron table, an iron bench, a sink, a hole in the floor, and two cameras on the ceiling.”
The post said that union work was the real reason for the solitary confinement: "The Kremlin wants its gulag to be made up of voiceless slaves."
Penal colony IK-6 for the designated public enemy
Navalny is reportedly serving time in the IK-6 penal colony in Melekhovo, about 250 kilometers east of Moscow, on charges of probation violations, fraud and contempt of court.
Authorities in Russia describe Navalny and his comrades-in-arms as enemies of the state who wanted to destabilize Russia with the support of the West.
Navalny was arrested on his return from Germany in January 2021 and convicted of violating the conditions of probation.
He collapsed on a domestic Russian flight in August 2020.
First he was treated in Russia, then transferred to the Berlin Charité.
There, poisoning with a nerve agent was determined.
The government in Moscow has denied allegations that Russian authorities tried to kill Navalny.
hba/Reuters/AP