With alcoholic tractor driver – “Gulag”: “Hobby biologist” tortures Navalny in custody

“Remember my tractor driver, whom the prison guards throw into my cell and leave alone to spend a day in a hospital full of flu and corona patients?” he asks his readership on the social network. The man was taken to the hospital for the fifth time and then immediately locked up again in a small cell with Navalny. For the Putin critic, the matter is clear:

“Soviet gulag with church”
On Tuesday, Navalny wrote on Twitter that he was currently reading works by human rights activist and Soviet dissident Anatoly Marchenko about the gulag (penal and labor camps in the Soviet Union). He was surprised that nothing had changed compared to the current Russian prison system. “It’s one and the same,” he summarizes. Everything is aimed at dehumanizing and harassing the prisoners.” There have never been any reforms, except for one innovation: there is now a church in every penal colony.

The circumstances under which the opposition member leafs through his books speak for themselves: a few days ago, three extremely bright lamps were installed in his tiny cell of only two by three meters. With such lighting, he says, it’s not just hard to read — even sitting is tiring. If that doesn’t change, he would go blind in three months, the politician said.

Detention in penal colony 6 in Melekhovo
Due to alleged fraud, Navalny is in Penal Colony 6 in Melekhovo, about 160 miles northeast of Moscow – under particularly harsh prison conditions. In May, a court upheld the nine-year prison sentence. Internationally, he is regarded as a political prisoner and the fiercest critic of Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin. Navalny had recovered from a poison attack in Germany in August 2020, but then voluntarily returned to Russia and has been in prison ever since.