TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — A smiling and joking Alexei Navalny appeared in court Wednesday via video link from the Arctic penal colony where he is serving a 19-year sentence, the first time the Russian opposition leader has been shown on camera since his transfer to the remote prison.
Russian news outlets released images of Navalny, in black prison garb and with a buzz cut, on a live TV feed from the “special regime” penal colony in the town of Kharp, in the Yamalo-Nenets region about 1,900 kilometers (1,200 miles) northeast of Moscow.
At the hearing, Navalny cracked jokes about the Arctic weather and asked if officials at his former prison threw a party when he was transferred.
The video was beamed to a hearing in a courtroom hundreds of miles away in the town of Kovrov, in the Vladimir region of central Russia, about 240 kilometers (150 miles) east of Moscow, near Penal Colony No. 6, where Navalny had been held until last month. The hearing was for one of many lawsuits he filed against the penal colony — this particular one challenged one of his stints in a “punishment cell.”
In video footage and media reports from the hearing, Navalny, 47, talked in his usual sardonic tone about how much he had missed officials at his old prison and the Kovrov court officials, and he joked about the harsh prison in Russia’s far north.
“Conditions here (at the penal colony in Kharp) — and that’s a dig at you, esteemed defendants — are better than at IK-6 in Vladimir,” Navalny deadpanned, using the penal colony’s acronym.
“There is one problem, though — and I don’t know which court to file a suit about it — the weather is bad here,” he added with a chuckle.
He was transferred in December to the “special regime” penal colony in Kharp — the highest security level of prisons in Russia. Navalny, who is President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest political foe, is serving time on charges of extremism.