A day after his appeal against his sentence was rejected, Kremlin opponent Alexei Navalny has been transferred to a cell with even stricter conditions. He announced this himself on Wednesday. He will spend a year in solitary confinement, under the strictest supervision in the entire Russian prison system.
Navalny is currently being held in the infamous IK-6 prison camp, about 250 kilometers north of Moscow. He is regularly sent to a special cell. This time it is to a so-called ‘EPKT’ cell, the strictest type in Russia.
“Yesterday, immediately after the appeal in the case against me, they took me to the commission and announced that because of my incorruptibility I will be transferred to the EPKT for 12 months,” Navalny said in a message on his social networks. Since his arrest in January 2021, he has been passing on texts to his lawyers, who in turn share them online.
Navalny says 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 strive for.”
According to the ruling, Navalny must serve nineteen years in one of the colonies with a “special regime”. These are facilities in the Russian prison system usually reserved for life sentences and the most dangerous criminals. It is not yet clear whether that transfer will be delayed due to his time in the EPTK cell.
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