Still unclear where Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny is, say allies

Allies of imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny said on Friday that they were unsure where he was after prison officials claimed he was no longer in the correctional colony where he had been serving his term.

Navalny, a former lawyer who rose to notoriety by mocking President Vladimir Putin’s elite and claiming widespread corruption, was sentenced to an extra 19 years in jail in August, on top of the 11-1/2 years he was already serving.

His whereabouts in the jail system were unclear earlier this week, according to allies. They had been planning for his transfer to a “special regime” colony, Russia’s worst prison grade.

A Navalny lawyer, Vyacheslav Gimadi, said that it had been 10 days since allies lost track of where he was. Gimadi said prison officials told a court on Friday that Navalny had left the IK-6 facility in Melekhovo, 235 km (145 miles) east of Moscow.

“Where exactly he was taken and where he is now, the prison service officials did not say,” Gimadi said.

Navalny’s spokeswoman, Kira Yarmysh, said Navalny’s lawyer had been told that he had been taken out of the Vladimir region where IK-6 is.

“Where he was taken is not known,” Yarmysh said.

“Let me remind you that the lawyers have not seen Alexei since December 6. Why there were not allowed to meet with him, if Alexei was still in IK-6, we do not know.”

Navalny earned admiration from Russia’s disparate opposition for voluntarily returning to Russia in 2021 from Germany, where he had been treated for what Western laboratory tests showed was an attempt to poison him with a nerve agent in Siberia.

Navalny says he was poisoned in Siberia in August 2020. The Kremlin denied trying to kill him and said there was no evidence he was poisoned with a nerve agent.

His supporters cast him as a Russian version of South Africa’s Nelson Mandela who will one day walk free from jail to lead his country.

But Russian authorities view him and his supporters as extremists with links to the CIA intelligence agency who are seeking to destabilise Russia. They have outlawed his movement, forcing many of his followers to flee abroad.