The 19-year extended prison sentence handed out to Putin opponent Alexei Navalny on Friday may seem, to many, meaningless and the stuff of Kremlin fantasy. Putin himself is unlikely to be with us in 2042, and his regime will be history long before that.
Nor do we know whether his successor will issue an amnesty to those Putin has singled out for persecution or take an even harder line with them. Rarely has the Russian future seemed so elastic – yet the conditions under which Navalny will be incarcerated now are anything but.
Sentenced to a ‘special regime’ prison colony, he is reportedly to be kept under constant bright light, banned from conversation with his cellmates and denied letters or more than one visit per year – at the discretion of the authorities. This follows years of mistreatment in two previous prisons, where he claims to have been tortured with sleep deprivation, kept in solitary confinement on the flimsiest of pretexts and, suffering stomach pains and loss of feeling in his legs, very possibly poisoned.
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