Jailed Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny has been returned to solitary confinement for the 13th time since he began serving his nine-year prison sentence last year, his team said on Twitter on Tuesday.
Tweeting on Navalny’s behalf, the Kremlin critic’s press secretary said that he had been sent back to solitary confinement as punishment for an investigation carried out by his team last month into allegedly corrupt purchases made by Russia’s Federal Prison Service.
“I was limited in buying food (we have new rules now), my daily walk is now at 7 a.m. (it’s important because if your walk is in the afternoon, you can get lucky enough to stand in a sunny spot for a while), I now get barely any time to read letters,” the politician said on Twitter.
His team also said Tuesday that Navalny was suffering from an unspecified stomach condition following his previous time in solitary confinement and that it had been necessary to call him an ambulance last week.
In January, dozens of Russian doctors signed an open letter urging Russian President Vladimir Putin “to stop abusing” Navalny and demanding the opposition politician be given a “full examination” and access to proper medical treatment.
The Kremlin critic, who built a huge social media operation producing videos exposing corruption among government officials, was sentenced to nine years in prison in March 2022.
Navalny was arrested last year when he returned to Russia from Germany, where he had been recovering from a poisoning attempt that he says was ordered by Putin, something the Kremlin has denied.