After Navalny lands in toughest prison, Russian court sends associate Ksenia Fadeyeva to jail for 10 years

A Russian court has sentenced Ksenia Fadeyeva, who led jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s now-banned organisation in the Siberian city of Tomsk, to almost 10 years in prison.

The information was released by her supporters Friday just days after it was revealed that Navalny has been stashed in a penal colony north of the Arctic Circle after supporters lost contact with him for more than two weeks.

Navalny, 47, was tracked down to the IK-3 penal colony in Kharp, also called “the Polar Wolf” colony, in the Yamal-Nenets region, about 1,900 km north east of Moscow, his spokesperson Kira Yarmysh said.

Navalny’s lawyer managed to see him last Monday Monday, Yarmysh said.

“This prison will be much worse than the one that was before,” Yarmysh told the media in Vilnius via video call. “They are trying to make his life as unbearable as it possibly can be.”

“They definitely try to isolate Alexei and to make it more difficult to access him,” said Yarmysh, who refused to disclose her location due to security concerns.

Navalny’s allies, who had been preparing for his expected transfer to a “special regime” colony, the harshest grade in Russia’s prison system, said he had not been seen by his lawyers since December 6 and raised the alarm about his fate.

The Polar Wolf colony, is considered to be one of the toughest prisons in Russia. Most prisoners there have been convicted of grave crimes. Winters are harsh — and temperatures are due to drop to around minus 28 Celsius (minus 18.4 Fahrenheit) there over the next week.