I live like Putin and Medvedev. At least, that’s how it feels when I look at the fence around my barracks. Everyone else just has ordinary bars, while I’ve got a solid 6-meter-high (about 20-foot) monster of a fence—the kind I’d only seen before in our investigations into Putin’s and Medvedev’s palaces. Putin both lives and works in the same place—Novo-Ogaryovo (the presidential residence outside Moscow) or Sochi. I’ve got something similar. There’s a room with three sewing machines right inside the barracks. It’s a special industrial zone inside my prison within a prison. It’s almost strange they didn’t just put a machine right next to my bunk. Putin makes ministers wait six hours in the reception room, and my lawyers aren’t allowed in to see me for five or six hours either. There’s a loudspeaker mounted on my barracks blasting songs like “Glory to Service in the FSB” (Russia’s security service), and I imagine Putin has the same thing. That, though, is where the resemblance ends. Putin, as we know, sleeps until 10, then swims in the pool and eats cottage cheese with honey. By that time, I’ve already had lunch. Because work starts at 6:40. 6:00 — wake-up. Ten minutes to make the bed, wash up, shave, and so on. 6:10 — exercise. 6:20 — marched out to breakfast. 6:40 — search and lineup for work. At work, you sit for seven hours at a sewing machine on a stool lower than your knee. At 10:20, there’s a 15-minute lunch break. After work, you keep sitting. Several hours on a wooden bench under a portrait of Putin. This is called “educational activities.” On Saturday, it’s a five-hour workday, and then again you sit on the bench under the portrait. On Sunday, in theory, it’s a day off. But in Putin’s administration—or wherever they drew up my unique schedule—they really know how to relax. On Sundays, we sit in a room on a wooden bench for 10 hours. I don’t know who exactly these activities are supposed to “educate,” except maybe to turn someone into a hunched-up disabled person with a bad back. But maybe that’s the point. But you know me: I’m an optimist, and I look for bright sides even in a dark existence. I entertain myself however I can. While sewing, I’ve learned Hamlet’s monologue in English. Though the convicts on my shift say that when I close my eyes and mutter something in Shakespearean English like “in thy orisons be all my sins remembered,” it looks as if I’m summoning a demon. But nothing of the sort has even crossed my mind: summoning a demon would be a violation of internal prison regulations 😉