The Russian opposition leader and activist Alexei Navalny claims he is being subjected to an absurd form of punishment in the prison where he is serving a long political sentence.
– The volume is so loud that you can’t escape it, writes Navalny in a statement on Telegram.
Navalny calls the punishment “Putin torture” and claims it is the prison’s revenge for his repeated complaints against the Russian prison service.
“Creative punishment”
The “Putin torture” consists precisely of audio recordings of the speeches Putin gave after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, according to Navalny.
– Their most creative punishment is a bunch of Putin speeches that are played loudly every single night, writes the activist.
– Will suffer the same fate
Every cell in the prison, he explains, has a radio where the inmates receive messages from the prison management. Through this, Putin’s speeches are now played, according to Navalny.
– The radio can be turned off, but that doesn’t help, because there is a loudspeaker system hanging in the corridors. Putin screams through the facility, and the volume is so loud that you can’t escape it, he writes.
– Listening to Putin is a punishment
Although the “torture” makes Navalny’s sentencing conditions more difficult, he highlights three “mitigating” circumstances.
– Firstly, even the prison management has acknowledged, through their actions, that listening to Putin is a punishment, writes Navalny.
– Secondly, the prison guards are also forced to listen to this with me, and for them it is even worse – they are, after all, right under the loudspeakers, he adds.
The doctor tried to gag: “Shameful”
Navalny then turns his attention to the war in Ukraine, which he has repeatedly spoken out against.
– Thirdly: It often happens that a special part of Putin’s speech is played just before I go to bed. In it he says: “We didn’t start this war, they started the war, and we are trying to stop it.” Every time I hear this, I can’t stand it. I shake my head at the audacity of such an obvious lie. Then I think: I have done everything right. It is better to be in a prison than to succumb to such a regime, writes the activist.