Jailed Vladimir Putin critic Alexei Navalny says he has been transferred permanently to a 'dog pen' isolation cell.
Since mid-August, the Russian opposition activist has spent 67 days in isolation at the IK-6 security prison where he is being held in the Vladimir region, east of Moscow.
Stints in the small cramped cell, which he calls a "punishment cell", are usually limited to 15 days, but now he fears this time it is permanent.
“They’re doing it to keep me quiet,” Mr Navalny said in posts on his verified Twitter account, saying that the rules also bar “long visits” from relatives.
The Kremlin opposition leader is currently serving over 11 years in jail after being imprisoned last year for two-and-a-half years and in March being sentenced to an additional nine years for fraud and contempt of court.
Navalny was jailed by the Kremlin at the start of 2021 upon returning to Russia after receiving medical treatment in Germany following a poison attack with a novichok nerve agent during a visit to Siberia in 2020.
Navalny and his team subsequently tracked who poisoned him and blamed Putin for the attack.
He has described the 3m by 3.5m cell as a concrete dog pen.
He wrote in August: “Most of the time it is unbearable because it is cold and damp.
"There is water on the floor. I have the beach version: very hot inside and hardly any air. The windowpane is tiny and the walls are too thick to allow for any ventilation — even the cobwebs never move.”
Repeated so-called offences at the jail have landed him in permanent solitary confinement.
Some of the wrong-doings in the eyes of the prison staff include not buttoning his collar, not cleaning the prison yard well enough, failing to keep his hands behind his back while walking, refusing to wash a fence and addressing a prison official by his military rank rather than the more respectable name and surname.
He previously described the cell as a hellhole and "an unpleasant place in every way possible".
His mother, father and wife Yulia were due to visit him four days after he was moved and they will be no longer able to.
According to the Russian penal code, detention in a cell-type room cannot exceed six months.
“They’re doing it to shut me up,” Navalny said on Thursday about his new prison conditions.
“So what’s my first duty? That’s right, to not be afraid and not shut up. At every opportunity, campaign against the war, Putin and United Russia. Hugs to you all", he wrote.
