Opposition politician Alexey Navalny, who was sentenced to 2.5 years in prison for alleged parole violations, is in custody at Pre-trial Detention Center Number 3 (SIZO-3) in the city of Kolchugino in Russia’s Vladimir region.
This was confirmed by Navalny himself in an Instagram post on Wednesday, March 3.
“Hello, this is Navalny again! But not [coming to you] from ‘Kremlin central,’ but from SIZO-3 ‘Kolchugino’ in the Vladimir region. When a prisoner is headed for transfer and they say ‘Vladimir region’ he gets sad, such is the reputation of the local facilities. But everything is fine with me, there isn’t even a pull-up bar in the exercise yard.”
Navalny’s lawyer Vadim Kobzev, who was spotted near the detention center in Kolchugino during the day on Wednesday, wrote on Twitter that Navalny is currently being held in a quarantine cell with two other inmates. “He’s in complete isolation, he can’t receive letters…There’s nothing in the cell except a TV. There’s no refrigerator, there isn’t even a kettle,” Kobzev said.
An unnamed source in law enforcement told the Russian state news agency TASS that Navalny is in custody in Kolchugino in order to quarantine ahead of his transfer to Penal Colony Number 2 in Pokrov.