Hardest form of solitary confinement
“Incorrigibility”: Navalny will be locked up even more
September 27, 2023, 9:59 p.m
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Kremlin critic Navalny has been in a prison camp for years. And soon the punishment will be even more severe and he will be further isolated. He feels “like a tired rock star on the verge of depression who has reached the top of the charts – and has nothing left to achieve,” he says.
According to Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, prison conditions in Russia have been tightened again. He was informed on Tuesday that he would be moved to a so-called EPKT cell for twelve months due to his “incorrigibility,” Navalny said in several online networks. EPKT cells are the harshest form of solitary confinement in the Russian penal system.
Permanent transfer to an EPKT cell is “the harshest possible punishment in a penal colony,” explained Navalny. The 47-year-old added that he feels “like a tired rock star on the verge of depression who has reached the top of the charts – and has nothing left to achieve.”
On Tuesday, an appeals court rejected Navalny’s appeal against a 19-year prison sentence. According to Navalny, he was informed of the tightening of his prison conditions “immediately” after this decision.
Critic of the war against Ukraine
After being poisoned in the summer of 2020 and a subsequent hospital stay in Berlin for several months, Navalny was arrested on his return to Russia in January 2021. Since then, he has communicated with the outside world essentially through messages that he has his lawyers spread in online networks.
Navalny, who made a name for himself as an anti-corruption activist in the years before his arrest, has repeatedly taken a stand against Russia’s war against Ukraine in his messages to the public in recent months and called on the Russian population to “resist” the Kremlin on.
Navalny is currently housed in a penal colony in Melechovo, 250 kilometers east of Moscow. There he is regularly housed in a so-called disciplinary cell as a punitive measure.