Alexey Navalny starts 2023 in punishment cell

Alexey Navalny, who is serving his sentence in Prison Colony No. 6 in the Vladimir region, has been placed in a “punishment cell” for the tenth time.

The politician posted on social media that he had been placed in the punishment cell on December 31. Navalny wrote that he was told:

Convict Navalny, surveillance operator noticed that you washed your face at 5:24 in the morning, while according to the schedule you wake up at 5:00 and wash at 6:00. Given the severity of the offense (they really said so) you will be transferred to the punishment cell for a maximum term of 15 days.

Thus my plans for a fancy New Year were ruined: I had saved a packet of potato chips and a can of saury for it. So I spent the New Year in the ShIZO with my old friends: a bum (who was sad) and a psycho (who was howling and shouting behind the door). New Year in the ShIZO is like any other day: getting up at 5 and going to bed at 21. So for the first time since I was six years old I just slept the whole New Year night. All in all I am pleased. People pay money to celebrate New Year in some unusual way, and I got that for free.

Navalny further noted that prison officials place one of his roommates in the prison’s medical ward, instead of in the barracks, whenever he is released from the prison cell. The politician suggested that he was being used as a bioweapon against him. Today, Navalny’s lawyer, Vadim Kobzev, wrote on Twitter that Navalny was sick with a cough and fever.

• Navalny wrote in late December that that a prisoner with poor hygiene was put in his cell for the second time presumably as a way to punish Navalny himself. According to Navalny, prison employees cleared the idea of assigning the man to Navalny’s cell with Russian Federal Penitentiary Service Director Arkady Gostev. “So it’s clear that they’re trying to get to me, but they shouldn’t just shamelessly use a live person as a tool. Nobody even thought about how the unwashed prisoner felt. What’s it like for him to be in the punitive isolation cell [for 15 days]? Does his health permit it? For [prison officials], human beings don’t exist; the man is just a talking object they can use however they please,” said Navalny.

Follow Meduza in English on Twitter to stay up to date.