Alexei Navalny completes one year in prison

The German magazine Spiegel has gained access to the brother of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who has been imprisoned for a year in the penal colony IK-2 , in the city of Prokrov, 100 kilometers east of Moscow. Navalny aroused the fury of Vladimir Putin when he released a documentary about the palace being built by the dictator on the edge of the Black Sea.

According to the Spiegel article, Navalny has a daily contact with their lawyers in prison. But his life is disturbed by the prison authorities so that he is psychologically shaken — which has not happened until now.

It is strictly forbidden for any prisoner to talk to Alexei Navalni. When he began a hunger strike, the smell of the food was purposefully spread throughout the prison. A prisoner who allegedly had tuberculosis was placed at his side and coughed all day.

Another prisoner was installed near his bed, who moaned and gasped during the night and even masturbated without disguising. A crude video suggesting that Navalny was having sex with another man was broadcast on the internal TV system. Homosexuality is taboo in Russian prisons.

After an assassination attempt by poisoning in 2020, Navalny decided to return to Russia hoping his gesture would spur a public revolt against the increasingly most authoritarian and corrupt President Putin. The calculation did not work out — the opposition was destroyed and now Putin threatens world stability with the probable invasion of neighboring Ukraine.