Alexei Navalny, who is languishing in a remote Arctic Circle jail, says he is now forced to wake up to the Russian national anthem followed by a pop song by Vladimir Putin’s favourite singer every day at 5am.
The fierce Kremlin critic has been locked away in the IK-3 penal colony in Kharp in the Yamal-Nenets region about 1,900km (1,200 miles) northeast of Moscow.
Navalny, 47, has kept up an unceasing campaign against the Kremlin from behind bars. He says he has been poisoned, handed a long prison term in one of Russia’s toughest prisons and locked up in a cell where he can only pace back and forth for 11 steps.
And on top of all this, he now has to listen to a pro-Putin pop song by the singer Shaman daily at the crack of dawn.
“The singer Shaman appeared on stage when I was already imprisoned, so I could neither see nor listen to his music. But I know that he is now Putin’s main singer. And he has the most popular song: ‘I’m Russian’,” Mr Navalny said on Twitter, formerly known as X.
“Everyone knows it, parodies of it are recorded, and so on. Of course, I was certainly curious to listen, but where in the prison I could do it? And then I was taken to Yamal.”
“And here, every day at 5 o’clock in the morning, we hear the command: ‘Wake up!’, followed by the Russian national anthem. Immediately afterward, the country’s second most important song is played – I’m Russian by Shaman,” he wrote.
The lyrics of the song by Shaman, who is frequently invited for state events, are: “I’m Russian. I’ll fight to the end… I’m Russian, my father’s blood flows in me, hey-hey… I’m Russian and I’m lucky with this fact… I’m Russian to spite the whole world.”
The anti-corruption activist and lawyer is serving a 19-year sentence on charges of extremism.
Mr Navalny added: “So imagine the picture: Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District. Polar night. Special-regime colony’s hut for violators.”
He joked that now he exercises to the song “I’m Russian”.
“A prisoner Alexey Navalny, who is sentenced to 19 years in prison, and whom Kremlin propaganda has been endlessly rinsed for years because he participated in Russian rallies, is exercising to the song ‘I’m Russian’, which he is being given as an educational activity for correctional purposes,” he wrote.
“To be honest, I’m still not sure that I correctly understand what post-irony and meta-irony are. But if that’s not it, what is it?” Mr Navalny wrote, adding a wink emoji to his post.
This is not the first time Mr Navalny has joked about his dire prison circumstances.
Reappearing after a three-week long disappearance in December last month, Mr Navalny was cracking jokes with the judge, apparently to show that the Kremlin cannot break him, despite the decades of prison time he faces on charges decried as politically motivated by the international community.
Mr Navalny’s team said he had been moved to a remote penal colony known as “Polar Wolf”, explaining why he went missing last month. The arduous 1,200-mile journey to the brutal prison takes three weeks by road and rail.
The activist drew laughter from the judge when he asked if a party had been thrown at the Melekhovo facility east of Moscow, where he had previously been held, to celebrate his departure and whether it had included karaoke.
He also asked if the prison had held a naked party – a reference to a gathering of scantily clad celebrities in Moscow last month that has been heavily criticised by the country’s conservative media.
Mr Navalny has been behind bars since January 2021, when he returned to Moscow after recuperating in Germany from nerve agent poisoning, which he blamed on the Kremlin. Before his arrest, he campaigned against official corruption and organised major anti-Kremlin protests.
Emily Foster is a globe-trotting journalist based in the UK. Her articles offer readers a global perspective on international events, exploring complex geopolitical issues and providing a nuanced view of the world’s most pressing challenges.
