The jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has ridiculed the backlash to a “nearly naked party” in Moscow during his first appearance since being banished to an Arctic prison, as authorities temporarily shut the nightclub where the party happened.
“Did you have a party?” Navalny asked the representative of the prison authorities during a video conference court appearance from the IK-3 penal colony in the Yamalo-Nenets region. “You probably had a naked party like [Nastya] Ivleeva?”
Russia has initiated tax, health, and criminal investigations after images from a glitzy party held by blogger Nastya Ivleeva last month prompted complaints from veterans of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, who said that Moscow’s rich and famous were partying while the country was on a war footing. Vladimir Putin was reportedly shown images from the event.
Navalny cracked jokes about the event in his first public appearance since he abruptly disappeared last month, beginning a nearly month-long journey to a remote Arctic Circle prison called the “Polar Wolf” where he is sentenced to 19 years under a “special regime”. Conditions at the colony are notoriously tough and it is surrounded by mountains and tundra, with freezing dark winters making way for short, mosquito-infested summers.
His abrupt and lengthy disappearance from the Melekhovo prison had raised concerns among supporters that he may have fallen ill or even died.
In video from the prison, Navalny appeared gaunt with his head shaved, but nonetheless made fun of the party furore, asking Russian authorities if they had held a “normal party or a karaoke party”, prompting laughter from a judge, Reuters reported. His suit against prison authorities over his harsh conditions and disciplinary penalties was dismissed.
Since the party on 21 December, Russian authorities have arrested and delivered a military summons to Nikolai Vasilyev, a rapper known as Vacio, who attended wearing only a sock over his penis.
Another singer, Maxim Tesli, the frontman of a band called Shchenki (The Puppies), was arrested trying to flee the country from St Petersburg airport this week. He had appeared in concert with a sock over his penis in an apparent allusion to the scandal.
Ivleeva, the party’s organiser, is facing jail time after authorities said they would launch an investigation for tax evasion.
On Wednesday, the state-run Tass news agency reported that the popular Mutabor nightclub, which hosted the party, was shuttered for 90 days for “violations of sanitary standards”. The Russian sanitary watchdog reportedly had identified a “patient with an infectious disease” at the party.
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The backlash against those who attended the event, including some of Russia’s most popular entertainers, has highlighted the limits of the Kremlin’s strategy to let wealthy Russians in cities such as Moscow largely ignore the war, even as hundreds of thousands of soldiers have been killed since Putin launched the full-scale invasion in 2022.
Some, including the Russian pop music veteran Philipp Kirkorov and publicist Ksenia Sobchak, have issued public apologies, while the Mutabor owner reportedly gave fragments of relics of Saint Nicholas to a Moscow church.
The scandal comes as Putin increasingly parrots conservative talking points ahead of his reelection campaign, while also seeking to rally support for the war and convince ordinary Russians that the country’s economy is capable of withstanding economic isolation from the west.
