Mock colony – Navalny reports from the “Polar Wolf” for the first time.

“I have a sheepskin coat, a hat with earflaps, I will soon get felt boots and I grew a beard during my twenty-day trip. There are no reindeer here, but there are huge, fluffy and very beautiful sheepdogs,” Navalny creates a Christmas-like and frosty (in the true sense of the word) atmosphere on his Telegram channel. Particularly freezing temperatures are forecast for the end of the week in the village of Charp, where the penal colony is located. The thermometer should then indicate almost minus 30 degrees.

“I now live behind the Arctic Circle… I don’t say ‘ho-ho-ho’, but ‘o dear-o dear-o dear’ when I look out the window and it is night, then evening, then night says Navalny again.

“My mood is still great”
The twenty-day journey was quite tiring. “But my spirits are still great, as befits Father Frost.” The Russian Santa Claus is known as “Father Frost” or “Djed Moros” (Russian). He gives gifts to people on New Year’s Eve and is supported by his granddaughter “Snegurotschka” (in German: Snow Maiden).

“They brought me here on Saturday evening. They transported me with such precautions and over such a strange route that I did not expect anyone to find me before the middle of January.

He was therefore very surprised when the door of his cell opened and he was told: “Your lawyer is here.” He told Navalny that people were worried about him. “Thank you for your support,” Putin’s opponent said, visibly satisfied.

“I can’t entertain you with stories about Arctic exoticism yet, because unfortunately I haven’t seen anything other than the cell. From the window you only see a fence,” Navalny said.

Watchmen like in the movies
“And I went for a walk. The garden is a slightly larger cell with snow on the ground. I also saw a guard post – not the kind in central Russia, but like in the movies – with machine guns, warm mittens and felt boots. With these very beautiful fluffy German Shepherds.”

“So don’t worry about me,” Navalny said. Everything is fine. “I’m very happy that I’m finally here.”

“If I’m Father Frost, you’re probably interested in what the presents look like. But after all, I am Father Frost under harsher circumstances. That is why only those who have behaved very badly receive gifts,” the opposition figure joked with a winking smiley.

“The conditions there are brutal”
Navalny’s team announced on Monday that the opposition leader had been found by a lawyer at the IK-3 camp in Charp in the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug after a long search. Russian authorities had not provided information on Navalny’s whereabouts after he left the previous prison camp in the Vladimir region, about 160 miles from Moscow, in early December.

The ‘Polarwolf’ prison camp, infamous for its harsh prison conditions, is located more than 2,000 kilometers from the capital. The difficult-to-access region is known for its permafrost soil. “The conditions there are brutal,” said Navalny’s aide Ivan Zhdanov. It is one of the northernmost and most remote prison camps of all. It was clear from the start that the Moscow power apparatus wanted to isolate Putin’s opponents.

Biting criticism of Putin
Navalny, who was sentenced to 19 years in prison for alleged extremism, among other things, repeatedly files lawsuits against the prison system for violating his rights. Not least, he uses the court hearings to deliver scathing criticism of Putin’s authoritarian system and Moscow’s war against Ukraine. Most recently, Navalny was no longer involved in the negotiations as the election campaign began.

At the same time, Kremlin opponents around Navalny also launched the “Russia without Putin” campaign in early December, calling on voters before the presidential elections to express their protest by voting for other candidates. However, Putin’s competitors are seen as having no chance. Many even support the president.