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Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is in a penal colony in Russia's far north, his team said on Monday, after his staff, lawyers and family were unaware of the imprisoned opposition politician's whereabouts for almost three weeks.
“His lawyer visited him today. Alexey is fine,” Navalny’s spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh said in an interview Post on Xformerly Twitter.
Yarmysh added that he was being held in a prison in the town of Charp in the Yamal-Nenetsk region, more than a thousand miles northeast of Moscow, a region notorious for its harsh winters and home to some of the harshest camps in the country Soviet Gulag system.
“It is almost impossible to get to this colony; It is almost impossible to even send letters there,” said Navalny’s ally Leonid Volkov. “This is the highest level of isolation from the world possible – and that is the whole purpose of this endeavor.”
Navalny's team has not had any contact with the politician since the beginning of December. He was scheduled to appear at several court hearings, but they were delayed as authorities initially cited technical difficulties in arranging a video feed for Navalny. Eventually, his associates were told that Navalny had been moved from the colony in the Vladimir region, which is just over a hundred miles east of Moscow.
Navalny, a prominent Kremlin critic who has posed the biggest political challenge to President Vladimir Putin in the last decade, was arrested in early 2021 immediately after returning to Russia from Germany, where he was being treated for nerve agent poisoning. He has been behind bars since then and authorities have launched a series of criminal cases against him, all of which Navalny has dismissed as politically motivated. According to Yarmysh, Navalny is a defendant in 14 criminal cases and faces a total of up to 35 years in prison.
In August, a Russian court sentenced him to 19 years in prison for “extremism” for organizing a political movement against the Kremlin and ordered his transfer to a “special regime” colony notorious for its harsh prison conditions Treatment of prisoners.
Transfers within the Russian penal system are secret and potentially dangerous for inmates who disappear for weeks without supervision from lawyers or family members.
Navalny's team said it had to send over 600 requests to various detention centers to obtain information about the politician's whereabouts. His transfer and disappearance came as Putin launched his campaign for a fifth term as president and elections were about four months away.
“It was clear from the beginning that the authorities wanted to isolate Alexei, especially before the elections,” Ivan Zhdanov, the head of Navalny’s anti-corruption foundation, which has investigated numerous Russian officials, said in a statement. “His whereabouts were kept secret and the publication of any information about him was completely banned.”
“Alexei’s situation is a clear example of how the system treats political prisoners and tries to isolate and repress them,” Zhdanov added.
The opposition politician's team recently launched a campaign to persuade Russians to vote for anyone other than Putin in the upcoming elections to resist his rule and the war in Ukraine.