TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — When Alexei Navalny turns 47 on Sunday, he’ll get up in a naked concrete cell with hardly any pure gentle.
He will not be capable of see or discuss to any of his family members. Cellphone calls and visits are banned for these in “punishment isolation” cells, a 2-by-3-meter (6 1/2-by-10-foot) area. Guards normally blast patriotic songs and speeches by President Vladimir Putin at him.
“Guess who’s the champion of listening to Putin’s speeches? Who listens to them for hours and falls asleep to them?” Navalny mentioned lately in a typically sardonic social media post by way of his attorneys from Penal Colony No. 6 within the Vladimir area east of Moscow.
He’s serving a nine-year time period as a consequence of finish in 2030 on prices extensively seen as trumped up, and is going through one other trial on new charges that might preserve him locked up for an additional twenty years. Rallies have been known as for Sunday in Russia to help him.
Navalny has change into Russia’s most well-known political prisoner — and never simply due to his prominence as Putin’s fiercest political foe, his poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin, and his being the topic of an Oscar-winning documentary.
He has chronicled his arbitrary placement in isolation, the place he has spent virtually six months. He is on a meager jail food regimen, restricted on how a lot time he can spend writing letters and compelled at instances to reside with a cellmate with poor private hygiene, making life much more depressing.
Many of the consideration goes to Navalny and different high-profile figures like Vladimir Kara-Murza, who was sentenced final month to 25 years on treason prices. However there is a rising variety of less-famous prisoners who’re serving time in equally harsh circumstances.
Memorial, Russia’s oldest and most distinguished human rights group and a 2022 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, counted 558 political prisoners within the nation as of April — greater than thrice the determine than in 2018, when it listed 183.
The Soviet Union’s far-flung gulag system of jail camps offered inmate labor to develop industries akin to mining and logging. Whereas circumstances differ amongst modern-day penal colonies, Russian legislation nonetheless permits prisoners to work on jobs like stitching uniforms for troopers.
In a 2021 report, the U.S. State Division mentioned circumstances in Russian prisons and detention facilities “have been usually harsh and life threatening. Overcrowding, abuse by guards and inmates, restricted entry to well being care, meals shortages and insufficient sanitation have been frequent in prisons, penal colonies, and different detention amenities.”
Andrei Pivovarov, an opposition determine sentenced final yr to 4 years in jail, has been in isolation at Penal Colony No. 7 in northern Russia’s Karelia area since January and is prone to keep there the remainder of this yr, mentioned his associate, Tatyana Usmanova. The establishment is infamous for its harsh circumstances and reviews of torture.
The 41-year-old former head of the pro-democracy group Open Russia spends his days alone in a small cell in a “strict detention” unit, and isn’t allowed any calls or visits from anybody however his legal professionals, Usmanova informed The Related Press. He can get one ebook from the jail library, can write letters for a number of hours a day and is permitted 90 minutes outdoor, she mentioned.
Different inmates are prohibited from making eye contact with Pivovarov within the corridors, contributing to his “most isolation,” she mentioned.
“It wasn’t sufficient to condemn him to an actual jail time period. They’re additionally making an attempt to smash his life there,” Usmanova added.
Pivovarov was pulled off a Warsaw-bound flight simply earlier than takeoff from St. Petersburg in Might 2021 and brought to the southern metropolis of Krasnodar. Authorities accused him of participating with an “undesirable” group -– a criminal offense since 2015.
A number of days earlier than his arrest, Open Russia had disbanded after getting the “undesirable” label.
After his trial in Krasnodar, the St. Petersburg native was convicted and sentenced in July, when Russia’s struggle in Ukraine and Putin’s sweeping crackdown on dissent have been in full swing.
He informed AP in a letter from Krasnodar in December that authorities moved him there “to cover me farther away” from his hometown and Moscow. That interview was one of many final Pivovarov was capable of give, describing jail life there as “boring and miserable,” together with his solely diversion being an hour-long stroll in a small yard. “Fortunate” inmates with money of their accounts can store at a jail retailer as soon as per week for 10 minutes however in any other case should keep of their cells, he wrote.
Letters from supporters carry his spirits, he mentioned. Many individuals wrote that they was bored with Russian politics, in keeping with Pivovarov, and “solely now are beginning to see clearly.”
Now, any letters take weeks to reach, Usmanova mentioned.
Circumstances are simpler for some less-famous political prisoners like Alexei Gorinov, a former member of a Moscow municipal council. He was was convicted of “spreading false data” in regards to the military in July over antiwar remarks he made at a council session.
Criticism of the invasion was criminalized a number of months earlier, and Gorinov, 61, grew to become the primary Russian despatched to jail for it, receiving seven years.
He’s housed in barracks with about 50 others in his unit at Penal Colony No. 2 within the Vladimir area, Gorinov mentioned in written solutions handed to AP in March.
The lengthy sentence for a low-profile activist shocked many, and Gorinov mentioned “authorities wanted an instance they may showcase to others (of) an bizarre individual, fairly than a public determine.”
Inmates in his unit can watch TV, and play chess, backgammon or desk tennis. There is a small kitchen to brew tea or espresso between meals, and so they can have meals from private provides.
However Gorinov mentioned jail officers nonetheless perform “enhanced management” of the unit, and he and two different inmates get particular checks each two hours, since they have been labeled “inclined to flee.”
There’s little medical assist, he mentioned.
“Proper now, I’m not feeling all that nicely, as I can’t get better from bronchitis,” he mentioned, including that he wanted therapy for pneumonia final winter at one other jail’s hospital ward, as a result of at Penal Colony No. 2, probably the most they’ll do is “break a fever.”
Additionally struggling well being issues is artist and musician Sasha Skochilenko, who’s detained amid her ongoing trial following her April 2022 arrest in St. Petersburg, additionally on prices of spreading false details about the military. Her crime was changing grocery store value tags with antiwar slogans in protest.
Skochilenko has a congenital coronary heart defect and celiac illness, requiring a gluten-free food regimen. She will get meals parcels weekly, however there’s a weight restrict, and the 32-year-old can’t eat “half the issues they offer her there,” mentioned her associate, Sophia Subbotina.
There is a stark distinction between detention amenities for men and women, and Skochilenko has it simpler in some methods than male prisoners, Subbotina mentioned.
“Oddly sufficient, the workers are principally good. Largely they’re ladies, they’re fairly pleasant, they’ll give useful ideas and so they have an excellent perspective towards Sasha,” Subbotina informed AP by cellphone.
“Usually they help Sasha, they inform her: ‘You’ll positively get out of right here quickly, that is so unfair right here.’ They learn about our relationship and they’re effective with it. They’re very humane,” she mentioned.
There’s no political propaganda within the jail and dance music blares from a radio. Cooking reveals play on TV. Skochilenko “wouldn’t watch them in regular life, however in jail, it’s a distraction,” Subbotina mentioned.
She lately organized for an outdoor heart specialist to look at Skochilneko and since March has been allowed to go to her twice a month.
Subbotina will get emotional when she recalled their first go to.
“It’s a complicated and peculiar feeling while you’ve been residing with an individual. Sasha and I’ve been collectively for over six years — waking up with them, falling asleep with them — then not with the ability to see them for a yr,” she mentioned. “I used to be nervous after I went to go to her. I didn’t know what I might say to Sasha, however in the long run, it went very well.”
Nonetheless, Subbotina mentioned a yr behind bars has been onerous on Skochilenko. The trial is transferring slowly, not like normally swift proceedings for high-profile political activists, with responsible verdicts virtually a certainty.
Skochilenko faces as much as 10 years if convicted.