Putin Critic Navalny Says He's Back in Solitary, Conditions "Hellish"

 Jailed Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny on Tuesday said he had been moved back into solitary confinement and forced to endure "extremely hellish" conditions.

Navalny, 46, is serving combined sentences of 11-1/2 years in a high-security penal colony for fraud and contempt of court on charges that he says were trumped up to silence him. A documentary about him won an Oscar last month.

Navalny said he had been released from a solitary confinement cell on Friday and sentenced to another 15 days there on Monday after his supporters released a probe showing the prison service was supposedly paying far too much for cabbage and pocketing the surplus.

"That is why the very next day after my colleagues released their investigation about these fun cabbage stories, they put me in the (confinement cell), immediately started setting up a 'working cell' for me and changed the daily routine, turning it from hellish to extremely hellish," he tweeted.

Navalny, who survived an attempt to poison him in 2020, has repeatedly been placed in punishment cells over the last year and backers say his life is in danger as his health worsens.

Lawyer Vadim Kobzev said an ambulance had been called to the colony on Friday night after Navalny's condition deteriorated as the result of a stomach ailment. The prisoner lost eight kilos (18 pounds) during the most recent 15-day spell of solitary confinement, he tweeted.

Navalny, who has over the years released dozens of videos alleging what he says is massive corruption in Russia, also said prison officials "made up completely unlawful rules, forbidding me to buy food, even with the money I had earned."

The Russian interior ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Last week Russia said Navalny supporters had helped assassinate war blogger Vladlen Tatarsky in St Petersburg.

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