State of the imprisoned Russian opposition, Alexei Navajo

The deterioration of prison conditions is threatening the health of jailed Russian opposition politician Alexei Navajo. The news was made known by one of his advisers as Mr. Navajo's Anti-Corruption Foundation is trying to turn the upcoming local elections in Moscow into an election race against war in Ukraine.

Alexei Navally was arrested in January last year when he returned to Russia from Germany, where he had been treated for what Western laboratory tests proved to be an almost deadly attempt to poison him in Siberia with a Soviet-era nerve toxin. Russia denies it has tried to kill him.

Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny has been sentenced to over 11 years in prison for violating parole, fraud and contempt of court charges, which he denies.

Last week, he wrote through his lawyers on social networks that he was sent to a third-time detention cell in August, in recognition of his political activity. The news agency “Reuters” writes that “Prison service did not respond to the request to comment on this statement”.

The punishment cell is two to three meters wide, has a table, chairs, and a bed. This marks a considerable deterioration of conditions for the opposition leader, his chief of staff Leonid Volkov said in an interview in Vilnius, Lithuania.

Now, suddenly, they began to dramatically exacerbate his condition, which poses a great threat to his health because no normal person could spend a long time in this particular cell. And for Alexei, who just survived poisoning is, of course, especially dangerous. This comes from the Kremlin. So, of course Putin has a plan. He wants to make Alexei Navajo's life unbearable. He wants to punish him more”, said Mr. Volkov.

Mr. Volkov said President Putin's popularity is on the decline, and the same is happening with support for Russia's war in Ukraine.

Both the Kremlin and Mr. Putin say that “special military operation” Russia's Ukraine is going as planned. They say this operation was necessary as the United States used Ukraine to threaten Russia through NATO enlargement and persecution of Russian-speaking people.

Ukraine and its Western allies say these are groundless excuses for an unproached conquering war.

It would take two, three years for Ukraine to be able to score military victories. Most economic experts say it will take two to three years for sanctions to have their effect and destroy Putin's economy. I would say as an expert, it takes two to three years to dramatically change the attitude of Russian society and make its struggle so unpopular that it will not be able to continue that”, said Mr. Volkov.

He said Russia's attack launched on February 24th in Ukraine shows that Russian leaders are not interested in what Russia was seen internationally, which Mr. Navlany's team had thought gave him “a level of defence”.

After the war started, we had to reevaluate all risks for Alexei Navajo”, said Mr. Volkov.

Mr. Navajo's team hopes to turn local elections in Moscow on 11 September to a protest vote, offering support to 400 candidates who say they have rejected the conflict.

They face much pressure, even violence and brutality. They're getting beat up, said Mr. Volkov.

The Kremlin did not respond to the request to comment on Mr. Volkov's accusations, which “Reuters” failed to verify.

He also spoke against proposals to prevent Russians from travelling to the EU, an idea of Baltic states and Poland, saying it was a gift for Kremlin propaganda. / VOA/