Imprisoned Russian dissident Alexei Navalny, who has spent weeks denouncing the tightening of his prison terms, said on Monday he would sue the prison for being stripped of his winter boots, even as it snowed outside and the temperature dropped, AFP reported. and Agerpres.

“I am submitting a complaint to the correctional facility where I am staying, asking them to give me winter boots,” he wrote in a letter sent to his lawyers and published on social media. According to Oleksiy Navalny, a prisoner 200 km from Moscow, this deprivation “is an excellent example of the cunning and sophistication of the pressure system” in Russian prisons.

“If they don’t give you winter boots, then you don’t go out for a walk (and suffer from it) or you go for a walk and get sick (which happened to me),” the opponent explains. . And, according to him, getting sick in the colony is “categorically not desirable”: hot water is limited to three cups a day, and for this you will have to contact the colony administration for medicine and services.

“When it feels that it has additional leverage, the administration begins to twist your arm and demand concessions from you,” Navalny says. “Not having stupid winter boots makes me vulnerable,” he says.

Oleksiy Navalny mocks some of his supporters

Navalny ridiculed some of his supporters who write to him and talk about “depression and darkness” in their letters.

“Are you serious? Come on, come back! If you’re alive, well and free, there’s nothing wrong with that. Drink a pumpkin cafe latte and do something to bring freedom to Russia!”

Alexei Navalny was arrested in Russia in January 2021 after he returned to the country after receiving treatment in Germany following his poisoning with a military-grade neurotoxic substance in Siberia.

He was later convicted in several trials deemed political.

In October, Navalny announced that he was facing new charges that could bring him 30 years in prison.