I Drove By Alexey Navalny’s New Arctic Prison

A Small Tour of Kharp and the Expansive Russian Hinterlands

You can actually see the prison wall where he is in the back right hand corner. Hi Alexey! Stay strong.

I just drove around Kharp, the small town in Northern Russia just inside the Arctic Circle where Aleksey Navalny, the Russian Opposition leader, was moved to. Apparently, the prison there is one of the farthest North. I have to tell you, despite what your mind is programmed to think by “prison in Russian arctic, the town didn’t look all the bad. In fact, it looks kind of new.

I couldn’t drive directly by the prison, from obvious security concerns, but I could see a corner of it from the hotel. The big bank there is called the GazProm Bank, named after the state-owned gas giant, that shifted its natural gas from Europe to China.

Despite what you think that the Ukraine war made them do it. I have to report it was a deal actually a couple decades in the making, with a forty-year contract, and pipelines well planned in advance. So, the investment is paying off already from this small town.

The town also has an oil and mining operations as well to support it, so this isn’t your father’s “gulag.” In short, the prison and town look modern, with many amenities. And yes, I was driving around virtually thanks to Google earth’s street view. Crazy right, it took twenty days for the Russian authorities to transfer him to this arctic prison, and…