Few kilometres from Navalny's death prison comes Russia's new exclusive Arctic adventure resort

"It is cold there! Like terror!” a former prisoner of penal colony No 3 in Kharp recalled. “I would not want anyone to sit locked up there,” another former inmate wrote. “It is hell,” a woman who in 2023 got her husband released from the colony underlined.

Nevertheless, Aleksei Navalny was not without spirit when he in December 2023 was moved to the colony located in the far northern region of Yamal-Nenets.

"I am your new Santa Claus," the political prisoner joked. 

"Well, I now have a sheepskin coat, an ushanka hat (a fur hat with ear-covering flaps), and soon I will get valenki (a traditional Russian winter footwear). I have grown a beard for the 20 days of my transportation," Navalny wrote in a message published on his social media.

Few weeks later, the popular politician that had been sentenced to 19 years of jail for his opposition to Vladimir Putin, died. There are strong indications that he was poisoned and killed.

Kharp was originally built by forced labourers in Stalin's death camps. It is one of Russia's northernmost prisons, believed to house more than thousand inmates. 

In addition to Colony No 3, where Navalny was locked up, it houses Colony No 18, where life-sentence criminals are imprisoned.

The prison town is now again making headlines, but this time not because of Aleksei Navalny.

A grand development plan is in the making in the nearby mountain areas. In the course of the next years, a major ski resort is planned built in Raj-Iz, about 20 km from Kharp. Also the Snowflake (Snezhinka), a so-called international Arctic station, is under development in the area.

The road connection to the development sites is already under construction. According to regional authorities, the 19,5 km long new highway will cost more than 16 billion rubles (€178 million). It will be a toll-road and financed primarily by the budget of the Yamal Nenets region, newspaper Pravda Urfo reports.

The ground is all tundra with countless lakes, streams, rivers and wetland. As many as 14 bridges needs to be built.

The construction of the highway was included in Putin's recently published list of decrees on Arctic development.

Behind the ski resort reportedly stands a consortium of Gazprombank, STK Sheregesh and the Azimut Hotels. On the plan is an all-year complex with 12 km of ski slopes, cableways, hotels, spa complexes, sport schools and entertainment facilities. The total price is estimated to about 13 billion rubles (€145 million).

The Snowflake (Snezhinka) is projected as a 10,200 square metre complex based on seven dome-type 4-storey buildings.

According to the project website, the Snowflake is to "test and demonstrate nature-saving technologies of life support, robotics, telecommunications, medicine, biotechnology, new materials, and artificial intelligence solutions."

It is developed on the initiative of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, and was for some time supported by the Arctic Council. 

The original plan was to get the €12 million complex up running in 2022, during Russia’s chairship in the Arctic Council. 

That never happened. Putin started his full-scale war against Ukraine and killed his biggest enemy, Aleksei Navalny.

Critics also suspect the whole project developments near Kharp to be a grave example of laundering of federal funds.

Experts told journalists that neither the new highway, nor the ski resort of Snowflake complex, will ever be able to pay back the investments. The project is probably set up in a way to siphon funds from the federal budget, they explained to Pravda Urfo. 

And moreover, who will be able to travel thousands of kilometres to ski in this desolate part of the Ural Mountains? The nearest airport is in Salekhard, on the other side of the great Ob River. And there is still no bridge across the river.