The reappearance of Alexei Navalny It’s almost a Christmas miracle… Russian style. Because yes, the most media political enemy of Putin is alive and has reappeared. But we have not seen him. Not heard. Almost not even her lawyer has been able to see him, an encounter that the authorities have tried to avoid. We have read Navalni on networks. After three sad weeks gone from the radar, it appears to be whole. “I am yours new Santa Claus, in the twenty days that my transfer lasted I grew a beard. You will wonder about the gifts. Well, since I am a special regime Santa Claus, there will only be gifts for those who have behaved very badly,” he said ironically. It is just part of what he published on social networks this Tuesday.

Transfers within the Russian prison system are surrounded by secrecy and inmates can disappear for several weeks, as in this case. Navalny’s team was especially concerned because he had been sick and, apparently,He was denied food and kept in a cell without ventilation.

‘Russian’ also because the uncomfortable opponent has exiled to one of the most remote, isolated and inhospitable prisons in the world. TO a gulag—literally, as such, Stalin founded it—there in the Arctic. About 2,000 kilometers from Moscow in a straight line (up to 3,000 depending on the path you follow), very difficult to access. Near the Urals almost two days by trainMoscow. They call it ‘the Polar Wolf Prison’, it is practically cut off from the world, they reach the 30 degrees below zero…and from the images it seems stuck in Soviet times.

Navalni himself gives an idea of ​​his toughness, drawing on the humor that – he says – a Santa Claus should have: “I don’t say ‘Ho-ho-ho’, but I do say ‘Oh-oh-oh’ when I look out the window, where I can see one night, then the afternoon, and then the night again.”

His spokesman confirmed this Tuesday that they had searched for him in all the maximum security prisons when they finally located him in this one, the furthest from civilization. “They didn’t want to let the lawyer in, but he got it. At least Alexei is okay after so much time,” said Kira Yarmish. “He is almost impossible to reach to this colony; it’s almost impossible even send letters over there. This is the highest possible level of isolation in the world,” added Leonid Volkov, Navalny’s main strategist, as a complaint.

Navalni’s whereabouts—his banishment—are confirmed, curiously, only a few days after the team stopped the reelection of Putin as Russian president will present his campaign headquarters. In fact, his team attributes this move to a new effort by the Kremlin by silence the opponentwhose supporters announced that They would agitate, they would boycott, the next elections.