Navalny’s prison: the Russian penal colony of Polar Wolf The situation in Sudan threatens to deteriorate

The prison camp is located in the Yamal region, far above the Arctic Circle, in the town of Charp. The weather is harsh, low temperatures down to -20 degrees are the norm. Alexei Navalny spent his last weeks here before he died on Friday due to unknown circumstances. The Russians said he collapsed after a walk and attempts to revive him were unsuccessful. His supporters speak of murder.

Camp IK-3, as it is officially called in Russian, is also known as the “Arctic Wolf”. It is located 3,000 kilometers northeast of Moscow. Only a narrow street leads here; About 6,000 people live in the city. In addition to the Navalny camp, there is also the “Polareule”, another high-security prison. According to a BBC report, it’s not just the external circumstances that are tough. Prisoners would be punished for the smallest infractions, including having to stand outside without winter clothing. Anyone who falls is doused with cold water, the BBC refers to statements by prisoners.

After the snow come the mosquitoes

The ground is covered with snow for months. When it thaws in May, it turns into a mushy mass. This attracts hordes of mosquitoes in the summer. According to the report, the prisoners had to expose themselves to this with their upper bodies bare. Due to its location high in the north of the world, the days are long – and for a few weeks there is no dark night in which the prisoners can sleep.

Navalny has been in solitary confinement for almost 300 days since 2022 and has been imprisoned in the ‘Arctic Wolf’ colony since December. There he only had one exit per day near his cell, where he had to walk through the snow. “3 meters of steps wide, 11 steps long,” is how he described the exit area on platform X. The look out the window showed him a fence and hardly any light. The Arctic winter is dark. His last post on They just gave me a 15 day SHIZO. This is the 4th SHIZO in less than 2 months that I have been there. They’re tough.” Shizo is short for solitary confinement.

Part of the Soviet Gulag system

But even the harsh conditions had not silenced the Kremlin critic. He filed complaints about prison conditions, which allowed him to appear regularly in court and make statements on camera. He tried to form an inmate union to fight for better jobs in the prison’s sewing department.

The high-security prison where the Kremlin held Navalny was set up under Stalin as part of the Soviet Union’s gulag network and is one of the most remote prisons in Russia. The ‘Arctic Wolf’ colony is surrounded by mountains and tundra, reports the British ‘The Guardian’. In December, the now deceased Putin opponent described his impressions after his arrival. “I don’t say ‘Ho-ho-ho’, but I say ‘Oh-oh-oh’ when I look out the window,” Navalny wrote, referring to the near-constant darkness outside and the call of Santa Claus. ‘Where I can see it is night, then evening, then night again.’

Shortly after his arrival, Navalny said he was suffering from increasing back pain, which he attributed to his previous captivity and was part of a strategy by Russian authorities to undermine his health. In a post on X, he also complained about being injected with unknown drugs.

Prisoner: Beaten on arrival

Statements from another prisoner show how cruelly prisoners are treated in the penal colony. In a 2018 interview, a former prisoner said that when he arrived at the colony, he was “hit with a club from all sides,” the British Independent reports. The man said prison guards carried out “collective punishment” on the prisoners. Russian authorities have denied these allegations.

An Organization Russia employee behind bars told the Russian online magazine “Meduza”: “There are no radiators to heat the cells. There are two pipes through which water flows in and out. If you argue with a prison officer and try to stand up for your rights, they just turn off the tap and your room temperature drops to 10 degrees. You sit in this cold cell and wear your synthetic clothes.”

Leonid Volkov, one of Navalny’s closest associates, had already made serious accusations against the Russian judiciary last year. A prisoner infected with flu was brought into Navalny’s cell and the opposition member subsequently fell ill. “Putin is trying to make the conditions of the punishment so unbearable that Navalny will not open his mouth if possible. It is not allowed to hit him physically. Which, unfortunately, is completely normal in Russian prisons. “However, this will not be applied to Navalny,” he told “Welt”.

Even after his death, Navalny found no peace. Apparently his body is being hidden from his family. Following the sudden death of prominent Russian Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, his supporters have accused authorities of preventing his body from being handed over to cover the tracks of his “killers”. “It is clear that the killers want to cover their tracks and therefore do not hand over his body and even hide it from his mother,” Navalny’s team said on Saturday in the online service Telegram.

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