Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has said that in the prison where he is serving his sentence, he is played pop music in praise of President Vladimir Putin every morning.
Navalny, one of the fiercest critics of the Russian president, is forced to listen to Shaman’s “I am Russian”.
He shared this in a message that his supporters helped spread on the social network X (formerly Twitter).
Navalny writes: “INevery day at 5 o’clock in the morning we hear the command: “Stand up!”, followed by the Russian national anthem, and immediately after that the country’s second most important song is played – Shaman’s “I’m a Russian”.”
2/6 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.
— Alexey Navalny (@navalny) January 22, 2024
“The singer – he says – became famous when I was already in prison, so I could neither see him nor listen to his music. But I knew that he had become Putin’s main singer. And that his main song was “I am Russian”.
“Of course I was curious to hear her, but where could I listen to her in prison?”
His curiosity was satisfied, he reveals, after he was transferred to Yamal, an arctic prison about 60 km north of the Arctic Circle, where guards began playing him an unusual wake-up song.
The real name of the singer Shaman is Yaroslav Dronov. He is on the crest of a wave of military patriotism, becoming a central figure on Russian state television and is one of the celebrities who have officially suggested that Putin run again for the presidency in March.
The song “I’m a Russian” is his trademark. Sometimes he performs it wearing a black leather suit with an armband in the colors of the Russian flag. The song sings about how Russians cannot be “broken”, how they “go all the way” and carry the blood of their fathers.
The 32-year-old singer caused controversy in November when he simulated the detonation of a nuclear bomb at a concert broadcast on state television, pressing a red button in a mock-up nuclear briefcase before fireworks exploded around him.
The irony, says Navalny, is that state propaganda once highlighted the fact that he marched with Russian nationalists in annual parades, and now, years later, he is being played an ultra-nationalist pop song for educational purposes while doing his morning exercises in prison .
For the 25th time in the isolator
Meanwhile, Navalny’s spokeswoman Kira Yarmish said he had been put in solitary confinement for 10 days at the penal colony above the Arctic Circle, where he was transferred last December.
Navalny was placed in solitary confinement for the 25th time, the spokeswoman said, recalling that in such conditions he has already spent 283 days. Navalny was sent to the solitary confinement of the penal colony, located about 60 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle, because when a warden asked him to identify himself, he did not do so according to procedures.
Navalny, 47, a former lawyer, rose to prominence more than a decade ago by exposing President Vladimir Putin’s elites and making accusations of corruption.
He has been sentenced to remain behind bars until he is 74 on charges he says were fabricated to keep him out of politics.
Russian authorities have branded Navalny a fraud and a Western-backed extremist who wants to disrupt political stability and wreak havoc in the world’s largest country, charges he denies.
The penal colony where Navalny is imprisoned is located about 60 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle and about 1,900 kilometers northeast of the capital Moscow.
Navalny was jailed upon his return to Russia in January 2021 from treatment in Germany following an alleged poisoning in August the previous year.
A charismatic activist, he appeared to be the only Russian opposition leader capable of mobilizing large numbers of people across Russia to participate in anti-government protests. But in 2020, he was poisoned in Siberia with a substance that Western laboratories later confirmed was a nerve agent.
After his treatment abroad, he returned to Russia and was immediately arrested as charges and convictions poured in against him.
2024-01-23 15:23:53
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