Desperate conditions for inmates as Kremlin crackdown overwhelms jails

Prisoners fill the cell’s bare floors like a carpet of horror. In the corner, a stinking latrine, brought into action at very human intervals. Everywhere else, bodies, trying to sleep without sheets or mattresses, in a space designed for a third of their number.

And they were the lucky ones.

Outside the detention cells, hundreds more were held overnight in unheated police vans, awaiting processing by a prison service working well beyond capacity in the aftermath of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny’s jailing.

Dmitry Ivanov, 21, a student arrested while protesting at Tuesday night’s pro-Navalny rally, was one of those being held at the Sakharovo jail in southern Moscow, where the worst overcrowding was reported. Speaking via a social media application from the jail, he told The Independent that “appalling” conditions meant sleeping was “impossible” for all but the most lucky.