Alexey Navalny disappeared for nineteen days. On Monday, his supporters found him in a remote penal colony. Putin’s nemesis is alive, but communicating with the outside world is becoming more difficult.
The temperature will drop to more than 20 degrees below zero next weekend. And there is no more than two hours of daylight at this time of year. Charp, a town of about 6,000 inhabitants, is also extremely difficult to reach. It is located about 2,000 kilometers from Moscow, in the far north of Russia, on the edge of the Ural Mountains. At this time of year you can only get there via an ‘ice road’ over the Ob river. “The conditions there are extremely difficult,” one of Alexei Navalny’s spokespeople wrote on social media on Monday.
And yet, when Navalny’s loyalists reported that they had “found” their leader in Charp, there was some relief. After all, in recent weeks they feared out loud for his life. On Monday, one of Navalny’s lawyers met him in penal colony ‘IK-3’ after intensive investigation. That is a place with a history, which is sometimes called the ‘arctic wolf camp’. During the time of Josef Stalin, the colony was part of the Gulag network. According to Navalny’s associates, Vladimir Putin’s main opponent is “doing well” considering the circumstances.
Presidential elections
By December 6, Navalny had completely disappeared from the radar. Until then he was in penal colony ‘IK-6’, less than 300 kilometers from Moscow. His lawyers were suddenly no longer allowed in there 19 days ago. On December 11, Russian authorities reported that Navalny was no longer there, without clarifying where he had gone. Numerous requests for information were declined. That immediately led to great concern.
His supporters made a connection with the impending Russian presidential elections. These are on the agenda for March. Putin wants to be hoisted onto the shield for the sixth time. That will probably be a formality. Yet the Russian president is wary of any form of public opposition.
And although Navalny has been in jail for years, he remains a factor. For example, his Anti-Corruption Foundation started a campaign a few weeks ago with a powerful slogan: ‘Russia without Putin’. Posters with a QR code appeared on billboards in a number of major cities. This led to a website calling on people not to vote for Putin. In recent years, Navalny has also managed to smuggle out messages that went around the world through his social media channels.
Now that he has been taken to Charp, that will become a lot more difficult. According to Navalny’s associates, electronic correspondence with the penal colony is completely impossible. And it is therefore not easy to get to the town.
Navalny has been Putin’s main political opponent for years. In 2020, the regime poisoned him with novichok in Russia. That did not prove fatal to Navalny, because he was rushed to Berlin after great international pressure. There they managed to keep him alive. But when Navalny recovered, he decided to travel back to Russia. He was immediately arrested upon his arrival.
Gear up
Navalny has now been convicted several times, including for ‘extremism’, and will remain in jail for years to come. His prison regime was never fun. He has ended up in an isolation cell countless times for the smallest crimes. But with the presidential elections approaching, things seem to be moving up a gear. Several of Navalny’s lawyers have already been jailed in recent weeks.
That kind of intimidation, like his move to Charp, makes it difficult for Navalny to continue communicating with the outside world. Yet the chance that he will still bury the hatchet is vanishingly small. “How many times has Putin tried to silence Navalny?” his team wrote in an email on Monday evening. “He won’t succeed this time either.”