Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny is being held in a prison camp in the Vladimir region of Russia, north-east of Moscow, known for his strict control of prisoners, has a message on the Instagram account of the opposition politician Monday confirmed.
Navalny’s exact location was unknown after his legal team said last week that he had been moved from the nearby Kolchugino prison and that they had not been told where he was being taken.
“I have to admit that the Russian prison system could have surprised me,” Navalny posted on Instagram along with an old photo of himself with a short haircut.
“I had no idea that it was possible to arrange a real concentration camp at 100 km from Moscow.”
Navalny added that he was in the penal colony no. 2 in the city of Pokrov, Vladimir, was with a ‘freshly shaven head’.
Navalny’s lawyer Olga Mikhailova confirmed that she could visit him in the colony.
In his post, Navalny writes that ‘video cameras are everywhere, everyone is being watched and at the slightest offense they are reporting.
‘I think someone upstairs read Orwell’s 1984 and said,’ Yeah, cool. Let’s do it. “Education through dehumanization”, “he added.
Navalny said he had not yet seen any hints of violence at the colony, but because of the “tense attitude of the convicts” he could easily believe previous reports of brutality.
Earlier this month, activist Konstantin Kotov, who spent nearly two years in the colony for violating protest rules, described to AFP an environment in which prisoners are not treated “like humans”.
In February, the European Court of Human Rights ordered Moscow to release the opposition politician out of concern for his life, a call that Russia quickly rejected.
In his Instagram post, Navalny said he was awakened “every hour” at night by a man who took a photo of him and announced that the convict, who “tended to escape”, was still in his cell wash.
In mid-January, shortly after landing at a Moscow airport in Germany, the Kremlin critic was arrested by police, where he was treated for an almost fatal poisoning with Soviet-era nerve substance novichok.
The anti-vaccine fighter, who gained notoriety for his investigation into the wealth of the Russian elite, maintains that poisoning was carried out on the orders of President Vladimir Putin.
The Kremlin has repeatedly denied the claim, but has not yet launched an investigation into the attack.
Navalny’s arrest sparked a wave of protests in Russia and a brutal police crackdown. The US and EU have called for his release.
In a coordinated action this month, Washington and Brussels imposed sanctions on senior Russian officials as US intelligence concluded that Moscow was organizing the poisoning attack on Navalny.