Navalny Announces Move to Country’s Harshest Prison

Navalny issued an Instagram post confirming that he’s been sent to one of Russia’s toughest prisons (Wikimedia Commons).

Russian dissident and activist Alexei Navalny announced in an Instagram post on March 15 that authorities have moved him to the notorious Russian penal colony IK-2. After much confusion as to his whereabouts, the opposition leader is now held in what he calls a “friendly concentration camp.” Known for its harsh treatment and psychological torture of prisoners, Navalny will spend the next two and a half years in the facility. 

On Instagram, Navalny described his experience thus far, reflecting on what he has observed from other inmates. He wrote that a man videotapes him sleeping once an hour as a security measure. While the politician has neither experienced nor seen any violence, several stories of brutality, including one where the prisoners were beaten with wooden hammers, are “hints” to the conditions and treatment that Navalny expects from the inmate experience. 

Navalny also attested to a seemingly “endless” list of rules imposed on the prisoners. Former inmates have also described the elaborate rule code at IK-2 as a form of psychological control. According to an inmate interview in the Moscow Times, prison authorities frequently change rules and punish prisoners for minor infractions. 

The opposition leader comforted his Instagram following by explaining that he copes with his situation by having a sense of humor about the Russian prison system and keeping an upbeat tone in the midst of the conditions. 

Navalny landed in the Russian prison system after he failed to comply with a probation requirement from a 2014 specious fraud charge. However, in 2020, the Russian Federal Security Service poisoned Navalny leading him to seek treatment in Germany. While under treatment, Russian authorities claim he violated the terms of his probation by failing to check in frequently enough with his probation officer. After a Moscow court convicted Navalny of the probation violation, the judge sentenced him to a two and a half year sentence. 

At the beginning of the month, Navalny served his sentence in SIZO-3, a pre-trial detention center northeast of Moscow. SIZO-3 is a minimum-security facility, known for relatively mild treatment. According to an interview in Meduza, former inmates at SIZO-3 typically complain of no more than boredom. 

At IK-2, a harsher former gulag, Navalny’s incarceration experience will likely be different. At IK-2, prisoners spend their days working on the fabrication of garments. Former inmates have exposed practices of psychological torture. “They will break you,” said Pyotr Kuryanov, a Russian defense lawyer who has represented clients held at the prison. 

Russian authorities have not released an official statement explaining the change. Navalny’s whereabouts are public knowledge only due to the politician’s Instagram post. International human rights organizations like Human Rights Watch find Russia’s lack of transparency in the prison system to be deeply troubling. Navalny’s imprisonment and the confusion behind it are exposing the endemic lack of public information provided by the Russian prison system.