Kremlin opponent Alexei Navalny, who was missing for more than two weeks, has been moved to the remote “Polar Wolf” prison camp in the far north of Russia, far from the power center of Moscow. “I’m fine,” the 47-year-old wrote in a letter shared on social networks on Tuesday. He reported on a strenuous 20-day journey into the dark arctic region of the vast empire. His family and supporters reacted with relief to the first sign of life since early December.
Navalny’s spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh said Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin was trying to reduce his influence before the presidential election by banning his opponent. Putin wants to be elected president for the fifth time on March 17, and Navalny repeatedly attacks him sharply from the prison camp.
Navalny’s team announced on Monday that the opposition leader had been found by a lawyer in the IK-3 camp in Charp in the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug after a long search. “I didn’t expect anyone to find me here before mid-January,” Navalny said. He thanked his team of lawyers and supporters who had been looking for him in various detention centers and prison camps for weeks.
Russian authorities had not provided any information about Navalny’s whereabouts after he left the previous prison camp in the Vladimir region, around 260 kilometers from Moscow, in early December.
The “Polarwolf” penal camp is notorious
The “Polarwolf” prison camp, notorious for its harsh prison conditions, is located more than 2,000 kilometers from the capital. The region, which is difficult to access, is known for its permafrost soil.
“The conditions there are brutal,” said Navalny’s aide Ivan Zhdanov. It is one of the northernmost and most remote penal camps of all. It was clear from the start that Moscow’s power apparatus wanted to isolate Putin’s opponents.
Navalny, who was sentenced to 19 years in prison for alleged extremism, among other things, repeatedly files lawsuits against the prison system for violating his rights. He uses the court appearances not least to scathingly criticize Putin’s authoritarian system and Moscow’s war against Ukraine. Most recently, Navalny was no longer involved in the negotiations when the election campaign began.
At the same time, the Kremlin opponents around Navalny also started the “Russia without Putin” campaign at the beginning of December, with which they called on voters before the presidential election to express their protest by voting for other candidates. However, Putin’s competitors are considered to have no chance. Many even support the president.
Navalny is internationally recognized as a political prisoner
There was also great concern about Navalny because he is in poor health. Navalny, who also survived an assassination attempt with the nerve agent Novichok in 2020, has been in prison for almost three years.
“Although today is also Christmas, the fact that we found Alexei on this day is not a Christmas miracle, but the huge and meticulous work of the lawyers at the Anti-Corruption Fund,” said Yulia Navalnaya, the opposition activist’s wife, on Instagram on Monday with. She also published an older selfie of herself with her husband from happier days.
Navalny has been internationally recognized as a political prisoner. The USA, the EU and the federal government have repeatedly expressed concern in recent weeks and called on the Russian leadership to provide information about Navalny’s whereabouts. However, Russia rejected this as interference in its internal affairs. The Kremlin also said it could not concern itself with the fate of prisoners in Russia.
Presidential ambitions
Navalny himself had repeatedly expressed his ambitions for the presidency. The head of the Central Election Commission, Ella Pamfilova, rejected him in the past, saying that he was still young and had everything ahead of him. With almost exactly the same words, she dismissed the 40-year-old lawyer and former journalist Yekaterina Duntsova during registration on Saturday. This time too, formal errors were officially mentioned in the documents for the election commission. The Kremlin critic Duntsova, who is the mother of three children, announced that she would sue against the decision.
Meanwhile, Pamfilova announced that there were about 30 candidates for the presidential election. Among them is the Kremlin-critical politician and war opponent Boris Nadezhdin. The pro-Western opposition politician from the liberal Jabloko party, who had already taken part in the election several times and always lost heavily, decided not to run again. He said that this was not an election but a referendum on Putin.
The head of the Kremlin had the constitution changed specifically in order to be able to run again. According to the currently valid version of the constitution, the 71-year-old can run for the last time in 2030. The presidential term in Russia is six years.
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