Dut the number 2 penal colony in Pokrov, a small town a hundred kilometers east of Moscow, has a ballroom has been widely known since Tuesday. A new criminal case against Alexey Navalny began in the unadorned room. Grainy images showed President Vladimir Putin’s main opponent with his hair cropped close in prisoner’s gear, with lawyers, his wife and security guards in camouflage. The aim of such trials is, on the one hand, to ensure that Navalny does not walk free in the summer of next year, as his current judgment, which has been criticized by the European Court of Human Rights, envisages. On the other hand, those in power want to isolate and blacken Navalnyj as much as possible.
Unlike in previous criminal proceedings, Navalny was not presented in a courtroom in the criminal cage that is customary in Russia, nor was it connected via video link. Rather, the judge, Margarita Kotowa, came from Moscow to Pokrov in the penal colony for an “external court hearing”. That doesn’t usually happen in Russia. For Navalnyj, on the other hand, the special is the rule. He recalled how he was arrested at Moscow airport in January last year, immediately after returning from Germany. He was accused at home of violating probation conditions while recovering from the consequences of the Novichok attack in August 2020. The detention was then ordered not in a courthouse but in a police station. “Why are you all going somewhere?” Navalnyj asked. “Simply because the people who ordered this process are very scared.”