Kremlin foe Navalny’s calls for in jail: moonshine, a balalaika and a pet kangaroo — all denied

MOSCOW (AP) — Imprisoned Russian opposition chief Alexei Navalny launched excerpts of his correspondence with jail directors Friday, detailing his sarcastic calls for for issues like a bottle of moonshine, a balalaika and even a kangaroo. His requests have been denied.

Responses from jail officers, posted on his social media account apparently by his staff, got here after he has spent nearly 180 days in solitary confinement since final summer time at Penal Colony No. 6 within the Vladimir area east of Moscow.

Navalny, 46, is serving a nine-year sentence after being convicted of fraud and contempt of courtroom – expenses he says have been trumped up for his efforts to reveal official corruption and organizing anti-Kremlin protests. He was arrested in January 2021 upon returning to Moscow after recuperating in Germany from nerve-agent poisoning that he blamed on the Kremlin.

“When you are sitting in a punishment isolation cell and have little entertainment, you can have fun with correspondence with the administration,” wrote Navalny.

Among his denied requests: a megaphone to be given to the prisoner in a close-by cell “so he can yell even louder,” and to award one other inmate who “killed a man with his bare hands” with the best rank in karate.

He additionally was turned down for his requests of moonshine, tobacco for rolling cigarettes and the balalaika. But Navalny expressed explicit mock outrage on the directors’ refusal to permit him to maintain a kangaroo in his cell. The politician stated inmates can to have a pet if the jail administration permits it.

“I will continue to fight for my inalienable right to own a kangaroo,” Navalny wrote sarcastically in his social media submit.

Navalny will mark his forty seventh birthday on Sunday, and there have been calls by his staff for protests to help him.

A Moscow courtroom has set a June 6 date for a listening to for a brand new trial for Navalny on a cost of extremism, which may hold him in jail for 30 years. He additionally stated an investigator informed him that he additionally would face a separate navy courtroom trial on terrorism expenses that probably carry a life sentence.

The new expenses come as Russian authorities are conducting an intensified crackdown on dissent amid the preventing in Ukraine, which Navalny has harshly criticized.