Alexei Navalny How Putin's fierce political opponent spent his last days

Each morning at 5 am, Alexei Navalny was rousted with the words "Wake up!" as the Russian national anthem played on the prison loudspeakers.

- Andrew Roth and Pjotr Sauer

It was always dark in the polar night above the Arctic Circle, and the temperature outside could fall below -30C. The convict would have a sheepskin coat and an ushanka hat to keep warm in a prison colony better known by its nickname: Polar Wolf.

Then, a second song began: I am Russian, a nationalistic anthem by the pro-Kremlin pop star Shaman, a favourite at patriotic rallies.

"So imagine the scene," wrote Navalny in one of his last accounts.

"A prisoner Alexey Navalny, who is sentenced to 19 years in prison, and whom Kremlin propaganda has tirelessly smeared for years because he participated in Russian protests, is exercising to the song 'I am Russian', which he is being given as an educational activity for correctional purposes." ach morning at 5am, Alexei Navalny was rousted with the Inside a punishment cell, Navalny said, he couldn't even see the sky. In the past, he had had to choose between eating his breakfast and writing letters to friends and acquaintances, as he had just 30 minutes for both.

And just days before his death, his mother came for a rare visit.

"I don't want to hear any condolences," she wrote later. "We saw our son in the colony on the 12th, we had a visit. He was alive, healthy, and cheerful." From late December until his death on 16 February, Navalny was held in Russia's IK-3 prison, a harsh penal colony that was built in 1961 on the site of the 501st Gulag, one of the Stalin-era labour camps that housed millions of prisoners during Soviet times.

Navalny understood that he might never leave prison alive. Yet there is little doubt his dispatch to IK-3 in the remote Yamalo-Nenets region hastened his demise, either due to the extreme conditions or a more direct act of foul play.