Relocated to a remote penal colony some 150 miles from Moscow, U.S. officials expressed concerns about 46-year-old Russian dissident Alex Navalny’s safety. Putting Navalny in solitary confinement for subversive activities, U.S. officials expressed concern over the effect of solitary confinement on his health. Navalny ran an anti-corruption organization, often accusing 69-year-old Vladimir Putin of corruption, claiming he siphoned billions off the Russian state to build a personal palace on the Black Sea. Navalny’s constant allegations against Putin resulted in his 2020 poisoning allegedly by FSB [formerly KGB] agents. Navalny was airlifted from Siberia to Germany where he spent time in Berlin and Bavaria recovering from Novichok poisoning . Against all advice, Navalny returned to Moscow Jan. 17, 2021, where he was promptly arrested at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport
Navalny was warned by 59-year-old former Yukos oil oligarch and Putin rival Mihail Khordorkovsky, once Russia richest man, until he was arrested in 2005, kept in prison until pardoned by Putin in 2013, only on the condition that he leave Russia for good. Navalny was so full of himself in 2021, he actually thought he could return to Moscow and resume his dissident activities. Navalny was so popular in the U.S. that President Joe Biden, during his presidential campaign, called for Navalny’s unconditional release. When that didn’t happen, Biden demanded publicly, with his 59-year-old Secretary of State Antony Blinken, that Putin release him from prison. Biden’s obsession with Navalny eventually led to his proxy war in Ukraine, deciding the U.S. government had skin in the fight against the Kremlin to protect Ukraine. After nearly six months of fighting, there’s no end in sight to the war.
Unlike Khordorkovsky that took his lumps in Siberian prison, Navalny remained defiant, using social media to blast Putin for stealing from the Russian people. “I know that I am in the right, and that the criminal cases against me are fabricated,” Navalny said after his arrest in Moscow. Navalny’s problems got worse once he returned to Moscow, with the courts throwing the book at him, eventually giving him a nine-and-a-half-year sentence. Navalny was transferred to the IK-6 penal colony some 155 miles from Moscow where he’s now in solitary confinement for rebellious activities. “I was summoned to my barrack to the commission, where they announced that the video footage showed me regularly unbuttoning the top button of my prison robe while in the industrial zone [the robe is just a few sizes too small for me],” Navalny wrote, giving his story for how he wound up in solitary.
Somehow Navalny manages to get the word out to his attorneys, who, in turn, get his message on Twitter or other social network platforms. “Our team is deeply worried,” said Anna Veduta, a member of Navalny’s anti-corruption organization in the United States. How there’s anyone left in Navalny’s anti-corruption organization is anyone’s guess. It’s probably some private citizen that keeps Navalny in the news. “The isolation unit is the harshest punishment in the legal prison hierarchy. Torture and murder are most often carried out there. Magnitisky was tortured to death in the very same manner,” said Veduta. How Veduta knows so much about the inner workings of Russia’s penal colonies, suggest she’s more that an unpaid volunteer. Maginitsky, a tax attorney, was a killed in prison in 2009, for exposing Kremlin. Veduta was worked the same thing would happen to Navalny.
Biden’s support of Navalny’s work to overthrow Russian President Vladimir Putin was a clear sign of trouble ahead for U.S.-Russian relations. Backing Navalny’s dissident activities was considered an outrage by the Kremlin, showing that the U.S. government under Biden was out to overthrow the Russian Federation. Once the Feb. 24 Urkaine war started, Biden jumped in with both feet, deciding the U.S. government would pay for Ukraine’s government salaries and fund a proxy war against the Russian Federation. Six months into the war, Biden has give Ukraine up to $44 billion to fund the Ukraine government and prosecute the war. Biden and Ukraine’s 44-year-old President Volodymer Zelensky have decided to break the Russian military, continuing to give Kiev more lethal weapons to battle the Russian military. Putin has watched the war turn into one against the United States.
Navalny’s back in the news because his backers want to put pressure on the U.S. government to get him out of prison. With Biden’s White House fully steeped on getting 31-year-old WNBA star Brittney Griner out prison, the last thing on the White House agenda is getting out Navalny. With the U.S. embroiled in a proxy war against the Kremlin, Biden’s negotiating team has their hands tied. What possible reason would Putin cut a deal with the White House to get Griner out of prison when Biden continues to battle to take out Putin’s government? Biden would like to spring Navalny from prison but knows, under the current circumstances, there’s no viable prisoner swap in the works. Biden’s fixation on Navalny speaks volumes about his intent to get rid of the Putin government. If Biden really want Griner out of jail, he needs to rethink his proxy war against the Kremlin.
About the Author
John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.
