Russian penal colony ‘Polar Wolf’: this is where Navalny spent his last two months

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Suddenly he was gone. Disappeared. In December 2023, there was no sign of life for Alexei Navalny († 47) for three weeks. Then he appeared again. On December 26, the prominent Putin critic came forward and explained his disappearance. He was transferred to the penal colony IK-3 in Charp in the Arctic Circle, better known as the Arctic Wolf.

‘Don’t worry about me, everything is fine. “I am so happy that I have finally arrived here,” Navalny wrote. But now it is clear: he cannot survive there for two months. Last week, Navalny’s sudden death caused horror around the world.

The precise circumstances are unclear. The mother of the slain Kremlin critic is said to have received a message that Navalny had died of cot death. This is probably the so-called instant death, an unexpected, sudden death due to heart problems.

Escape is practically impossible

The fact is: the Arctic wolf is tough and local conditions are brutal. Navalny’s ally, Ivan Zhdanov, described IK-3, which was established in 1961 on the site of a former Soviet Gulag forced labor camp, as “one of the northernmost and most remote” prison colonies in Russia. A maximum of 1,050 people can be locked up here.

Escape is practically impossible: on one side there are hundreds of kilometers of tundra, on the other side the mountains of the Arctic-Urals. And it is bitterly cold. Up to minus 32 degrees. Navalny joked about this in early January. “Today I went for a walk, was cold and thought about Leonardo DiCaprio and his dead horse trick in ‘The Revenant’.” In the film, actor DiCaprio (49) crawls into a still warm animal carcass to prevent him from freezing to death.

Harsh greetings in the bathhouse

Former IK-3 prisoners report physical and psychological cruelty. There is also a lack of clothing; in some cases only a pair of winter boots and a worn suit are given away. And sometimes prisoners are held in cells without daylight or hot water. Some accuse prison guards of torture.

One convict described how newcomers were ‘welcomed’: ‘When the prisoners enter the colony, they are taken to the bathhouse. If someone takes off their clothes and wants to wash, the water is turned off and masked people come in and start beating you.” According to the ex-con, about fifteen people – prisoners and employees – beat him up for half an hour.

Last words on Valentine’s Day

Despite the harsh conditions, Navalny regularly joked about prison routines at his posts. On January 22, he reported that prisoners were woken up every morning at 5 a.m. to the Russian national anthem. The second most important song is ‘Ja Russkij’ (in German: I am a Russian) by Kremlin loyalist Shaman (32).

The Kremlin critic last spoke out on Valentine’s Day – with a declaration of love to his wife Yulia Navalnaya (47). News of his sudden death followed shortly afterwards.

In many Russian cities, people laid flowers at monuments to victims of political repression and lit candles in memory of Navalny. Hundreds of arrests took place across the country this weekend, and police officers and men in plain clothes were stationed at memorial sites.

Source: Blick