Navalny assaulted by guards in Russian prison, Western allies allege

Alexei Navalny, the dissident political leader now languishing in a remote Russian penal colony, has been assaulted by prison guards there, his allies say, suggesting a potential escalation of the tactics the 46-year-old Kremlin foe may be facing.

“They grabbed Navalny, they kicked him in the groin, and then they physically pinned him to the wall," Anna Veduta, a Washington-based vice president of Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, told Yahoo News.

She said she could not provide details on his condition, given the difficulty of conveying information out of the penal colony, IK-6, where he has been held for almost a year.

The news comes days after Navalny’s associates in the West said he was rapidly losing weight, potentially because prison authorities were administering low doses of poison.

“They kill him slowly,” Veduta told Yahoo News late last year.

A former attorney, Navalny launched a pro-democracy movement that irked the Kremlin. Despite near-total control of Russian political and civic life, President Vladimir Putin has relentlessly hounded opposition figures and apostates. Many have been poisoned, shot, thrown out of windows or left to die in prison.

This week also saw another dissident, Vladimir Kara-Murza, sentenced to 25 years in prison for his opposition to Putin and the war in Ukraine. Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, arrested in Russia earlier this month on fictitious espionage charges, also appeared in a Moscow courtroom this week.

The news of Navalny’s apparently deteriorating health comes just weeks after a documentary about his fight against Putin’s autocratic regime won an Academy Award, a development that could have hardly pleased Moscow.

Titled simply “Navalny,” the film chronicles his recuperation in Germany from an attempted Kremlin poisoning in 2020. It ends with Navalny’s dramatic return to Russia, where he is promptly arrested. He was sentenced last year to more than a decade in prison on fraudulent corruption charges.

Coming home to Russia elevated Navalny’s status as a political leader. But it is not clear if he knew that the Kremlin would subject him to such a lengthy sentence and force him to serve it out in a penal colony far from Moscow.

“I think it was a miscalculation,” the film’s director, Daniel Roher, recently confessed to NPR. “I spend a lot of time thinking about whether or not it was the right decision, whether or not he could have been more effective outside of Russia as a free man.”

Since his sentencing, Navalny has been subjected to prolonged stays in solitary confinement. It is routine for Russian dissidents to die in prison, a grim reality that recalls the Soviet gulags where millions perished.

Veduta said the assault by guards, which took place on Monday, was precipitated by the placement of a foul-smelling inmate in Navalny’s cell. Navalny’s attorney Vadim Kobzev said the inmate — apparently one whom authorities had previously used to torment Navalny — had been “brought to a completely animal state.”

He added that the “smell in the cell was such that it was impossible to enter” and that Navalny refused to go in.

This angered his guards, evidently precipitating the assault. “By prison rules, [Navalny] had to physically intimidate and beat this person,” Veduta said, referring to the complex informal rules that have historically governed prison life in Russia. “But he refused."

Kira Yarmish, another close Navalny associate, wrote on Twitter that, as a result of the incident, “a new criminal case was opened against him,” which she said could result in “a possible term of up to 5 years.”

Last week, Navalny’s attorneys sent a letter to Kremlin human rights commissioner Tatyana Moskalkova, complaining about his treatment while also warning that Navalny had learned that “a provocation is expected against him with the participation of a cellmate.”

The letter was not answered.