Cracking jokes, a V-Day message for wife: How Navalny spent final days in prison

Alexei Navalny, the most outspoken critic of Russian president Vladimir Putin, spent his final weeks in a penal colony above the Arctic Circle. He was moved there from his former prison closer to Moscow. Conditions were trying but he seemed in good spirits days before his death. The last appearance The Russian Opposition leader, in his last appearance from the ‘Polar Wolf’ penal colony in which he was housed, was laughing and cracking jokes.

This video of Alexei Navalny is from yesterday.

He had a court appearance which he attended from the Arctic penal colony he was being held in. https://t.co/4QvJMWHZTw pic.twitter.com/3UdxZcDBfT

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) February 16, 2024

Navalny on Thursday testified before the court via video conference. The video of him showed him looking through a window with bars. In it, he was cracking wise about his own quickly dwindling funds and even the judge’s salary. Even the officials of the court were smiling along with Navalny, reports Reuters. Also read: Alexei Navalny dead at 47: Remembering Putin critic who remained defiant to the end Navalny, seen wearing his black prison uniform, displayed his usual gallows sense of humour. “Your Honour, I will send you my personal account number so that you can use your huge salary as a federal judge to ‘warm up’ my personal account, because I am running out of money,” Navalny said. According to SOTA, the court was called into session after a prison officer tried to take away Navalny’s pen. [caption id=“attachment_13737022” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Alexei Navalny appears via a video link from the Arctic penal colony where he is serving a 19-year sentence, provided by the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service during a hearing of Russia’s Supreme Court, in Moscow, Russia, on 11 January. AP[/caption] Navalny later announced he was ordered to spend 15 days in solitary confinement.  He has repeatedly been sentenced to solitary confinement since he was sent to jail. “The Yamal prison decided to break Vladimir’s record of fawning and pleasing the Moscow authorities. They just gave me 15 days in solitary confinement,” he wrote on X. “This is the fourth solitary confinement spell in less than 2 months that I have been with them,” he added. It was Navalny’s final message. A Valentine’s Day message On Valentine’s Day, Navalny put out a post dedicated to his wife, Yulia Navalnaya. [caption id=“attachment_13737032” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Yulia Navalnaya, wife of Alexei Navalny, speaks during the Munich Security Conference, in Germany on 16 February. AP[/caption]   “Baby, you and I have everything, just like in the song: cities, airfield lights, blue snowstorms and thousands of kilometres between us,” he said, quoting a popular Soviet-era tune. “But I feel that you are near me every second, and I love you more and more.”

Poking fun at prison routines On 22 January, he said the prison wardens at IK-3 would wake everybody up at 5 am to play the Russian national anthem, according to a report in AFP. “And right after that, the second most important song in the country: Shaman’s ‘Ya Russky,’” he said. The song – which means “I’m Russian” has become an unofficial anthem for President Vladimir Putin. “Imagine the scene. Yamal-Nenets region. Polar night. In a penal colony of convicts, prisoner Navalny serving 19 years, who the Kremlin’s propaganda for years has scolded for taking part in Russian marches, is exercising to ‘Ya Russky’”. Thinking about Leonardo DiCaprio Navalny continued sharing details about life in the Arctic prison. After a spell in quarantine, he said, “The idea that Putin was pleased (enough) that he had put me in a barracks in the Far North that they would stop throwing me in solitary confinement was … naive.” Prison authorities told him: “‘Convict Navalny refused to introduce himself in the correct way’. Seven days in solitary confinement.” Navalny spent more than 300 days in solitary confinement, or a “punishment cell”, as his colleagues called it, based on its name in Russian during his three years in prison. He was ordered there on 27 occasions, often for minor infringements of prison protocol. Allowed out for a daily walk in the pitch black at 6:30 a.m., Navalny said: “I promised myself I would go out in any weather.” [caption id=“attachment_13737052” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny listens to a question while speaking to the media in Moscow, in August 2013. File photo/AP[/caption] His cell was “11 steps from wall to wall”. “It has never been colder than minus 32 (Celsius). Even in such a temperature you can walk more than half an hour – only if you have the time to grow back a nose, ears and fingers,” he said in a 9 January post, reports AFP. “Today I was walking, freezing and thinking about Leonardo DiCaprio and his trick with a dead horse in The Revenant,” he said, referring to a scene in which his character crawls into an animal carcass to keep warm. “I don’t think it would work here. A dead horse would freeze to death within 15 minutes.” Also read: Missing for 6 days: The strange case of Alexei Navalny’s disappearance from jail No ho-ho-ho but oh-oh-oh Navalny posted his first message from the Arctic prison colony on 26 December. “I am your new grandfather Frost,” Navalny said, in his usual tongue-in-cheek manner. “I have a tulup, an ushanka and I will have valenki soon,” he added, referring to traditional furry Russian winter coats, hats and boots. “I now live above the Arctic Circle … But I don’t say ‘ho-ho-ho, I say ‘oh-oh-oh’ when I look out the window, where first there is night, then evening, then night again.” Navalny said he was tired from the 20-day journey from his previous prison in the central Vladimir region, close to Moscow. “Don’t worry about me, everything is well. I am so happy that I finally got here.” [caption id=“attachment_13737072” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] People lay flowers paying their last respects to Alexei Navalny at the monument, a large boulder from the Solovetsky islands, where the first camp of the Gulag political prison system was established. AP[/caption] The news of his death The Putin critic was coping with life in the icy IK-3 prison colony in the Siberian region of Yamal-Nenets, some 2,000 kilometres from his native Moscow. On Friday,  Russia’s prison service broke the news that Navalny had died after collapsing at the prison colony. The prison service of the Yamalo-Nenets region where the 47-year-old Russian Opposition leader was serving his sentence said he “felt unwell” after a walk and “almost immediately lost consciousness.” The service said medical staff were not able to resuscitate Navalny and the cause of death was being determined. He was 47. [caption id=“attachment_13737092” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] A demonstrator holds a poster with Alexei Navalny’s portrait and a quote of his reading (Russian) “I’m not afraid, don’t be afraid either,” as policemen guard in front of the Russian embassy in Sofia, Bulgaria. AP[/caption] The stunning news of Navalny’s death — less than a month before an election that will give Putin another six years in power — brought renewed criticism and outrage directed at the Kremlin leader who has cracked down on all Opposition at home. People laid flowers at monuments to victims of Soviet-era political repressions in some Russian cities, but there was no immediate indication that Navalny’s death, which would deal a heavy blow to the beleaguered and fractured Opposition, would spark large protests in the country. World leaders slam Putin World leaders and Russian Opposition activists wasted no time Friday in blaming his death on Putin. “It is obvious that he was killed by Putin,” said Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who was visiting Germany as he sought aid for his country as it fights off an invasion by Russia. “Putin doesn’t care who dies — only for him to hold his position. This is why he must hold onto nothing. Putin must lose everything and be held responsible for his deeds,” Zelenskyy added. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, whose country temporarily took in Navalny in 2020 after he was poisoned with a nerve agent, praised the Kremlin critic’s bravery and said his death makes clear “what kind of regime this is.” “He has probably now paid for this courage with his life,” Scholz said, standing next to Zelenskyy. The German leader said he met Navalny in Berlin during his convalescence.

With inputs from agencies