Russian opposition politician Alexey Navalny, who has been in prison since 2021, has been placed in solitary confinement for the 19th time since his sentence began, his Telegram channel reported on Tuesday.
Navalny said that a court in Moscow had recently granted him one phone call to his wife and a one-off visit by his parents. The prison administration, however, told him they wouldn’t abide by the court’s decision.
“Looking at the court papers, they said: ‘we don’t give a shit about your Moscow court and its papers’, and then they sent me to solitary confinement for the 19th time, so it’s 220 days in a solitary cell to my name altogether,”
Navalny said, adding “and it’s me who serves time for disrespecting the court”.
Despite being sentenced to serve an additional 19 years in prison in extremely harsh conditions for the alleged creation of an “extremist community” and for “sponsoring extremism” in early August, Navalny remains legally entitled to family visits.