Oppositionist and anti-corruption activist Alexeï Navalny, jailed for a year and a half in Russia, said on Monday he had been placed in a disciplinary cell after pledging to form a prisoners’ union.

Hello everyone from midday. The union fight is never easy, but then what about the unions in jail, ”she wrote in a message posted on social media.

He says he was put in solitary confinement for three days for breaking the rules by unbuttoning the top of his convict outfit. According to him, the management threatened to make this prison “his permanent residence” if he did not change his attitude.

“concrete niche”

He describes his cell as a “concrete doghouse” with a chair, a retractable bed, a sink, and “a hole in the floor.” Right now, he is “very hot”. “At night you feel like a fish washed up on the shore,” writes Navalny.

“I am a model of responsible consumption. In my cell there is only a cup and a book. Only when it comes to eating do they give you a spoon and a plate,” he says with his usual irony.

Two cameras watch him. Visits and mail are prohibited. An hour’s walk a day “in a similar cell, but with a little sky.” He says that he is entitled to pen and paper every day for one hour and fifteen minutes.

“I am sitting on my iron bench in front of my iron table. I am writing this message and I am going to write instructions for the zeks (Russian prisoners, editor’s note) about their rights to work, as long as you don’t take my paper.”

Sentenced to nine years in prison

Last week, Alexei Navalny, 46, claimed to have set up a union in his prison near the city of Vladimir – 200 km east of Moscow – where he works in a sewing workshop.

He claims to have won “his first victory” by replacing the stools of the inmates working in the workshop with chairs.

In March, Alexei Navalny was sentenced to nine years in prison under a “severe” regime on charges of embezzlement that he considers fictitious.

He was arrested in January 2021, upon his return to Russia after being treated in Germany after a serious poisoning that he attributes to the Kremlin, which he denies.