Alexei Navalny – the most high-profile figure of Russia’s political opposition – has just been sentenced to 19 years in a ‘special regime prison colony’. This was no surprise.
Navalny himself predicted the ‘Stalinist’ sentence for a variety of criminal charges, some relating to ‘extremism’, in a blog post the day before the sentence was handed down: ‘The formula for calculating it is simple: the prosecution’s request minus 10–15 per cent. They asked for 20 years, so I’ll get 18 or something.’
This latest verdict adds prison time to the sentence he is already serving in the Melekhovo prison colony – around five hours east by car from Moscow – which also served as the location for the latest court proceedings that were held behind closed doors.
Defiance has become a hallmark of Navalny’s approach
Conditions in the Melekhovo prison colony are bad enough: some have referred to it as a ‘torture conveyor belt’. But ‘special regime prison colonies’ are even worse,
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