Alexey Navalny gives first interview from prison camp

Navalny says he is forced to watch state television in prison and decries ‘culture of snitching’ and constant control.

Kremlin critic Alexey Navalny has given his first interview from prison, comparing it to a Chinese labour camp and saying he is forced to watch eight hours of state television and propaganda films a day. The 45-year-old Russian opposition figure told The New York Times in an interview published on Wednesday that the days of heavy labour in Soviet gulags were over – replaced by what he called the “psychological violence” of brainwashing and propaganda. Navalny is being held in a maximum-security prison colony in Pokrov, 100km (60 miles) east of Moscow.