Putin is using imprisoned ballerina as a 'cheap bargaining chip' with the West, says former dissident who spent years in gulag where Navalny died

Putin is using the Russian-American ballerina detained in Moscow as a 'cheap bargaining chip' with the West, according to a Soviet dissident who exchanged prison letters with Alexei Navalny in the year before he died. 

Natan Sharansky, 76, a prominent human rights activist who survived almost a decade in the same gulag as Navalny 40 years earlier, spoke about the Kremlin's latest move and what it means for relations with America. 

LA-based dancer Ksenia Karelina, 32, was detained in Moscow on treason charges for allegedly sending $51.80 to a Ukrainian charity. She faces 20 years behind bars.

Sharansky knows better than anyone about the horrors she is likely to face in the country's Orwellian prison system, and said her detention was 'no doubt' a sign of rising tensions between Russia and the US. 

'First of all, Putin’s regime is extremely hostile to any expression of sympathy to Ukraine, it’s clear,' he told DailyMail.com on Thursday. 'Second, it’s a cheap way of collecting the currency to bargain with the West.'

Sharansky became the first political prisoner released by former Russian president Mikhail Gorbachev following an international campaign for his freedom (Pictured: Sharansky surrounded by press after meeting with US Pres. Ronald W. Reagan in 1986)

LA-based dancer Ksenia Karelina, 32, was detained in Moscow on treason charges for allegedly sending $51.80 to a Ukrainian charity. She faces 20 years behind bars

Sharansky wrote a book called Fear No Evil, which Navalny (pictured) read in prison and said it gave him 'hope' for Russia's future. Sharansky went on to pursue a decades-long career in politics, rising to the level of Israel's deputy prime minister in 2001

Born in Donestk, eastern Ukraine, Sharansky was jailed in the former Soviet Union in 1977 while campaigning for the rights of Jews to emigrate to Israel. 

He was sentenced over a fabricated charge of spying for the Americans, and spent nine years enduring torture and solitary confinement in the Siberian prison where Navalny died on February 16, 2024. 

Sharansky became the first political detainee released by former Russian president Mikhail Gorbachev through a prisoner swap in 1986, following an international campaign for his freedom led by his wife, Avital.

He wrote a book called Fear No Evil, which Navalny, 47, read in prison and said it gave him 'hope' for Russia's future. Sharansky went on to pursue a decades-long career in politics, rising to the level of Israel's deputy prime minister in 2001. 

Ksenia Karelina is detained in Moscow

The statesman said America must make Putin 'pay a very serious price' for Karelina's detention if she is to be freed. 

'To be clear, there are no laws (in Russia),' he told DailyMail.com.

'So it doesn’t matter what the arrested person is accused of, whether it’s an American journalist accused of espionage or somebody with American citizenship who is accused of giving $50 to Ukraine, it doesn’t matter...

'Really I think that America must be very clear that any steps from him - whether it is the killing of Navalny or arresting of Americans - he’ll have to pay a very serious price for this.'

Sharansky engaged with Putin several times during his tenure in the Israeli cabinet. He said it was clear from the start of the Russian president's reign that he wanted nothing less than 'full recognition as a super power' from the West. 

'When he came to power in his first years, I met him a number of times as an Israel minister. He was very irritated that America is not giving him full recognition as a superpower,' the former Israeli statesman told DailyMail.com.

'He decided that he did need power because he is forever… all these presidents disappear after a few years and he is the only one still here.

'He wanted to restore the Russian Empire. The West, led by America, is making it more difficult for him to do it. 

'He has all the reasons to be irritated by the free world and specifically by America because they didn’t let him become the dictator so easily and the leader of the Russian Empire as easily as he would like to.'

Natan Sharansky, 76, a prominent human rights activist who survived almost a decade in the same gulag as Navalny 40 years prior, spoke with DailyMail.com about the Kremlin's latest move and what it means for relations with America

Vladimir Putin has been accused of orchestrating Alexei Navalny's death

Pres. Reagan presenting Soviet Jewish activist Natan Sharansky (nee Anatoly Schcharansky) (2L) w. Medal of Honor w. VP Bush (R) & State Secy. Shultz (L)

Civil rights activist, USSR Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky (with fur cap) and US embassador Richard Burt after his release to West Germany at the Glienicker Bridge that connects (East German) Potsdam and (West) Berlin

Israeli Trade Minister Natan Sharansky is given a guided tour of Hebron January 15, 1997 by one of the Jewish settlers who live in the city

Israeli President Shimon Peres (L) and former Soviet dissident and human rights activist Natan Sharansky are seen during a conference on February 21, 2010 in Jerusalem, Israel

Navalny, who was the strongest domestic political force opposing Putin, shared four letters laced with dark humor, religious references, and grim insights into prison life with Sharansky in March and April 2023 - before they were cut off.

In his first note, he wrote 'I hope I am the last to endure this', just less than a year before he was allegedly fatally poisoned with Novichok at a penal colony known as the 'Polar Wolf' in Siberia on February 16, 2024.

Sharansky was held in a Moscow labor camp for nine years from 1977 after being denied permission to leave what was then the Soviet Union for Israel, and the two bonded over how little has changed in the brutal Russian prison system since. 

Their historic friendship - memorialized in the letters obtained by The Free Press - was sparked by Navalny's revelation that he read Sharansky's memoir, Fear No Evil, in the gulag where he died.

They were strangers when Navalny began the correspondence - penning his first letter to Sharansky on April 3 from IK-6 'Melekhovo,' - a facility around 155 miles east of Moscow known for the abuse and torture of inmates. 

Sharansky was held at the same colony for a time, and Navalny joked 'I am not sure if you have retained warm memories of it' in his opening letter.

'Now there will probably be a plaque saying "Natan Sharansky was held here"', he added.

'Please forgive the intrusion and a letter from a stranger, but I believe it's permissible in author-reader relations.'

A general view of a church (R) for the prisoners of the IK-3 penal colony, where Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny served his jail term and where he died, in Kharp settlement near Salekhard, Yamal-Nenets Region, Russia

Alexei and Yulia met while on holiday in Turkey

Navalny thanked Sharansky for his book because 'it has helped me a lot' while enduring unimaginable conditions. 

'I understand that I am not the first, but I really want to become the last, or at least one of the last, of those who are forced to endure this,' he wrote. 

Navalny said Fear No Evil gave him 'hope' because of the 'similarity between the two systems - the Soviet Union and Putin's Russia' which exposed 'the hypocrisy that serves as the very basis of their essence'. 

He said this 'guarantees an equally inevitable collapse' of Putin's regime like the fall of the USSR in 1991.  

The book also prompted an unexpected laugh from the prisoner.

'I was laughing when I was reading the passage where you wrote, “I was penalized with a series of 15 days at SHIZO, and then, as an offender who broke prison rules, they sent me to the PKT for 6 months."

'I was amused by the fact that neither the essence of the system nor the pattern of its acts has changed.'

Sharansky wrote back the same day from Jerusalem, saying he 'experienced a kind of shock receiving a letter from you' and referring addressing Navalny as 'dear esteemed Aleksei'.

'The thought itself that it came directly from SHIZO, where you have already spent 128 days, excites in a way that an old man would be excited, receiving a letter from his 'alma mater,' the university where he spent many years of his youth,' Sharansky wrote. 

He noted that Vladimir Kara-Murza, another jailed dissident who remains behind bars today, has also written to him about how the book still served as a guide to Russian prison today. 'My misfortune has brought about this silver lining,' he said.

Describing himself as 'an admirer' of Navalny, Sharansky said: 'Aleksei, you are not just a dissident—you are a dissident “with a style”!

'My horror over your poisoning changed to amazement and exhilaration when you started your own independent investigation.'

'I wish to you—no matter how hard it may be physically—to maintain your inner freedom,' he added.

'In prison I discovered that in addition to the law of universal gravitation of particles there is also a law of universal gravitation of souls. By remaining a free person in prison, you, Aleksei, influence the souls of millions of people worldwide.'

Natan Sharansky in 1999. Sharansky was jailed while campaigning for the rights of Jews to emigrate to Israel. He was sentenced over a fabricated charge of spying for the Americans, and spent nine years enduring torture and solitary confinement in Siberian prison

Sharansky, Soviet dissident and Israeli politician during photo session, January 28, 1987 in Los Angeles, California

Canadians protesting in support of Sharansky on his 35th birthday on the 115th day of his hunger strike in a Soviet prison

It was most recently reported that Navalny died of 'sudden death syndrome', but no details were given to back this claim up

Sharansky was jailed while campaigning for the rights of Jews to emigrate to Israel. He was sentenced over a fabricated charge of spying for the Americans, and spent nine years enduring torture and solitary confinement in Siberian prison.  

He noted that he was writing to Navalny the day before Passover - 'the celebration of the liberation of the Jews from Egyptian slavery 3,500 years ago' - and signed off his letter to the jailed activist with 'hugs'. 

Navalny wrote back four days later saying he was so overjoyed to receive a response from the author that he cried.

'I was so touched that I had to hide my tears from my cellmates,' Navalny wrote. 

'And this is the second time you do it to me! In the last page of “Fear No Evil,” where you write “forgive my being a little late,” it is of course impossible not to start crying.

'In your alma mater everything is as it was. Traditions are honored. On Friday evening, they let me out of the SHIZO, today on Monday—I got another 15 days. Everything according to “Ecclesiastes”: what was, will be.

'But I continue to believe that we will correct it and one day in Russia there will be what was not. And will not be what was.'

Sharansky responded 10 days later, on April 17, saying he was grateful his letters were reaching Navalny.

He signed off with a chilling comment: 'Judging by all of your time in SHIZO, you will soon beat all of my records. I hope you don’t succeed in this.'

Navalny died less than a year later, with his widow Yulia saying he was poisoned with Novichok. 

In a video message, Yulia Navalnya, 47, said: 'Vladimir Putin killed my husband.' Holding back tears, she pledged to carry on her husband's work and fight for a free Russia with the help of its citizens.