'I am your new Santa Claus': Alexei Navalny speaks out after being found in Arctic prison colony
WASHINGTON — Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny likened himself to Santa Claus in a new message after he was located in a prison colony north of the Arctic circle weeks after losing contact with his associates.
Navalny, one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest critics, is facing a 19-year sentence on charges of extremism, which he has denied. His attorneys, who lost contact with him Dec. 6, located him at the Arctic prison colony dubbed the “Polar Wolf” Monday in the country's northern Yamalo-Nenetsk region.
“I am your new Santa Claus,” Navalny wrote in a wry post shared on social media on Tuesday. “Well, I now have a sheepskin coat, an ushanka hat (a fur hat with ear-covering flaps), and soon I will get valenki (a traditional Russian winter footwear). I have grown a beard for the 20 days of my transportation.”
Navalny wrote he was brought to the prison on Saturday night and was transported on a “strange route.” The opposition leader explained that he didn’t expect anyone to find him until mid-January.
“I don't say "Ho-ho-ho", but I do say "Oh-oh-oh" when I look out of the window, where I can see a night, then the evening, and then the night again,” he wrote. “The 20 days of my transportation were pretty exhausting, but I'm still in a good mood, as befits a Santa Claus.”
Navalny’s chief strategist, Leonid Volkov, shared on X after the leader was moved to the remote prison that “It is almost impossible to get to this colony; it is almost impossible to even send letters there. This is the highest possible level of isolation from the world.”
He had previously been detained in Russia’s Vladimir region, about 140 miles east of Moscow.
“Since I'm Santa Claus, you're probably wondering about the presents,” he added. “But I am a special-regime Santa Claus, so only those who have behaved very badly get presents.”
Navalny was poisoned with a military-grade nerve agent in the Siberian city of Tomsk in August 2020 and later evacuated to Berlin for medical care. After spending more than one week in a coma and recovering from the assassination attempt, Navalny returned to Moscow on Jan. 17, 2021, and was arrested at passport control for violating the terms of his parole.
Contributing: Miles J. Herszenhorn, Paste BN; Associated Press