Infacet Russia’s penal colonies: A have a look at life for political prisoners caught in Putin’s crackdowns

TALLINN, Estonia (AP) – When Alexei Navalny turns 47 on Sunday, he’ll get up in a naked concrete cell with hardly any pure gentle.

He gained’t be capable to see or speak to any of his family members. Phone calls and visits are banned for these in “punishment isolation” cells, a 2-by-3-meter (6 1/2-by-10-foot) house. Guards normally blast patriotic songs and speeches by President Vladimir Putin at him.

“Guess who is the champion of listening to Putin’s speeches? Who listens to them for hours and falls asleep to them?” Navalny mentioned not too long ago in a usually sardonic social media put up by way of his attorneys from Penal Colony No. 6 within the Vladimir area east of Moscow.

He is serving a nine-year time period because of finish in 2030 on costs extensively seen as trumped up, and is dealing with one other trial on new costs that might hold him locked up for one more twenty years. Rallies have been referred to as for Sunday in Russia to help him.

Navalny has develop into Russia’s most well-known political prisoner – and never simply due to his prominence as Putin’s fiercest political foe, his poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin, and his being the topic of an Oscar-winning documentary.

He has chronicled his arbitrary placement in isolation, the place he has spent nearly six months. He’s on a meager jail food regimen, restricted on how a lot time he can spend writing letters and compelled at instances to stay with a cellmate with poor private hygiene, making life much more depressing.

Most of the eye goes to Navalny and different high-profile figures like Vladimir Kara-Murza, who was sentenced final month to 25 years on treason costs. But there’s a rising variety of less-famous prisoners who’re serving time in equally harsh situations.

Memorial, Russia’s oldest and most outstanding human rights group and a 2022 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, counted 558 political prisoners within the nation as of April – greater than thrice the determine than in 2018, when it listed 183.

The Soviet Union’s far-flung gulag system of jail camps offered inmate labor to develop industries reminiscent of mining and logging. While situations fluctuate amongst modern-day penal colonies, Russian regulation nonetheless permits prisoners to work on jobs like stitching uniforms for troopers.

In a 2021 report, the U.S. State Department mentioned situations in Russian prisons and detention facilities “were often harsh and life threatening. Overcrowding, abuse by guards and inmates, limited access to health care, food shortages and inadequate sanitation were common in prisons, penal colonies, and other detention facilities.”

Andrei Pivovarov, an opposition determine sentenced final 12 months to 4 years in jail, has been in isolation at Penal Colony No. 7 in northern Russia’s Karelia area since January and is more likely to keep there the remainder of this 12 months, mentioned his accomplice, Tatyana Usmanova. The establishment is infamous for its harsh situations and experiences of torture.

The 41-year-old former head of the pro-democracy group Open Russia spends his days alone in a small cell in a “strict detention” unit, and isn’t allowed any calls or visits from anybody however his attorneys, Usmanova instructed The Associated Press. He can get one e-book from the jail library, can write letters for a number of hours a day and is permitted 90 minutes outdoor, she mentioned.

Other inmates are prohibited from making eye contact with Pivovarov within the corridors, contributing to his “maximum isolation,” she mentioned.

“It wasn’t enough to sentence him to a real prison term. They are also trying to ruin his life there,” Usmanova added.

Pivovarov was pulled off a Warsaw-bound flight simply earlier than takeoff from St. Petersburg in May 2021 and brought to the southern metropolis of Krasnodar. Authorities accused him of partaking with an “undesirable” group -– against the law since 2015.

Several days earlier than his arrest, Open Russia had disbanded after getting the “undesirable” label.

After his trial in Krasnodar, the St. Petersburg native was convicted and sentenced in July, when Russia’s warfare in Ukraine and Putin’s sweeping crackdown on dissent have been in full swing.

He instructed AP in a letter from Krasnodar in December that authorities moved him there “to hide me farther away” from his hometown and Moscow. That interview was one of many final Pivovarov was in a position to give, describing jail life there as “boring and depressing,” along with his solely diversion being an hour-long stroll in a small yard. “Lucky” inmates with money of their accounts can store at a jail retailer as soon as per week for 10 minutes however in any other case should keep of their cells, he wrote.

Letters from supporters raise his spirits, he mentioned. Many individuals wrote that they was tired of Russian politics, in accordance with Pivovarov, and “only now are starting to see clearly.”

Now, any letters take weeks to reach, Usmanova mentioned.

Conditions are simpler for some less-famous political prisoners like Alexei Gorinov, a former member of a Moscow municipal council. He was was convicted of “spreading false information” concerning the military in July over antiwar remarks he made at a council session.

Criticism of the invasion was criminalized just a few months earlier, and Gorinov, 61, turned the primary Russian despatched to jail for it, receiving seven years.

He is housed in barracks with about 50 others in his unit at Penal Colony No. 2 within the Vladimir area, Gorinov mentioned in written solutions handed to AP in March.

The lengthy sentence for a low-profile activist shocked many, and Gorinov mentioned “authorities needed an example they could showcase to others (of) an ordinary person, rather than a public figure.”

Inmates in his unit can watch TV, and play chess, backgammon or desk tennis. There’s a small kitchen to brew tea or espresso between meals, they usually can have meals from private provides.

But Gorinov mentioned jail officers nonetheless perform “enhanced control” of the unit, and he and two different inmates get particular checks each two hours, since they’ve been labeled “prone to escape.”

There is little medical assist, he mentioned.

“Right now, I’m not feeling all that well, as I can’t recover from bronchitis,” he mentioned, including that he wanted remedy for pneumonia final winter at one other jail’s hospital ward, as a result of at Penal Colony No. 2, probably the most they’ll do is “break a fever.”

Also struggling well being issues is artist and musician Sasha Skochilenko, who’s detained amid her ongoing trial following her April 2022 arrest in St. Petersburg, additionally on costs of spreading false details about the military. Her crime was changing grocery store value tags with antiwar slogans in protest.

Skochilenko has a congenital coronary heart defect and celiac illness, requiring a gluten-free food regimen. She will get meals parcels weekly, however there’s a weight restrict, and the 32-year-old can’t eat “half the things they give her there,” mentioned her accomplice, Sophia Subbotina.

There’s a stark distinction between detention amenities for men and women, and Skochilenko has it simpler in some methods than male prisoners, Subbotina mentioned.

“Oddly enough, the staff are mostly nice. Mostly they are women, they are quite friendly, they will give helpful tips and they have a very good attitude toward Sasha,” Subbotina instructed AP by cellphone.

“Often they support Sasha, they tell her: ‘You will definitely get out of here soon, this is so unfair here.’ They know about our relationship and they are fine with it. They’re very humane,” she mentioned.

There’s no political propaganda within the jail and dance music blares from a radio. Cooking exhibits play on TV. Skochilenko “wouldn’t watch them in normal life, but in jail, it’s a distraction,” Subbotina mentioned.

She not too long ago organized for an outdoor heart specialist to look at Skochilneko and since March has been allowed to go to her twice a month.

Subbotina will get emotional when she recalled their first go to.

“It is a complex and weird feeling when you’ve been living with a person. Sasha and I have been together for over six years – waking up with them, falling asleep with them – then not being able to see them for a year,” she mentioned. “I was nervous when I went to visit her. I didn’t know what I would say to Sasha, but in the end, it went really well.”

Still, Subbotina mentioned a 12 months behind bars has been exhausting on Skochilenko. The trial is shifting slowly, in contrast to normally swift proceedings for high-profile political activists, with responsible verdicts nearly a certainty.