CNN
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Alexey Navalny, the imprisoned Russian dissident, has been moved to solitary confinement, according to tweets from himself and his staff, in what he describes as a move designed to plan to “shut me up”.
Navalny, a prominent critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, explained what happened in a Twitter thread on Thursday: “Congratulations, I’ve moved up one level in the hierarchy for prisoners in prison,” Navalny wrote sarcastically, adding that prison officials had moved him. to a cramped “cell room”.
Cell-style cells are used to punish or to separate the most dangerous offenders in the Russian prison system. Prisoners in Russia’s penal colonies often put in barracks instead of prison cells according to a report by the Center for Oriental Studies (OSW) based in Poland.
In his isolation, Navalny said he was only allowed two books and was able to use the prison mandate, “albeit on a very limited budget.”
But “the truly indescribable beastliness, so characteristic of the Kremlin, which had manual control over my entire detention,” was the blocking of visits, he said. Navalny writes that his parents, children and wife will be visiting, but he will no longer be able to see them.
“Alexey Navalny was moved to a cell-style room. It’s like a punishment cell, not just for 15 days but forever,” his spokesman Kira Yarmysh wrote on Twitter.
Under Russian criminal law, detention in a cell-style room cannot exceed six months. CNN has reached out to Russia’s penitential services for comment.
Navalny was poisoned with a nerve agent in 2020, an attack on several Western officials, and Navalny himself has publicly blamed the Kremlin. Russia has denied any involvement.
After spending five months in Germany recovering from the Novichok poisoning, Navalny last year returned to Moscow, where he was immediately arrested for violating the terms of probation imposed from a 2014 case.
Earlier this year, Navalny was sentenced to nine years in prison for fraud he said was politically motivated.
While Judge Margarita Kotova read out the charges against him, the footage shows the haggard-looking Navalny standing next to his lawyers in a room full of security officials. He appeared motionless Following the proceedings, perusing some court documents on the table in front of him.
Navalny then move in june from a penal colony where he is serving his sentence to a higher security prison facility in Melekhovo in the Vladimir Region.
“They’re doing it to silence me,” Navalny said on Twitter Thursday about his new prison conditions. “So what is my first mission? That’s right, no fear and no silence,” he wrote, urging others to do the same.
“At every opportunity, campaign against war, Putin and Russia are united. Hug you all.”
