Jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has been located at a prison colony above the Arctic Circle after three weeks of no contact with him, his associates said. Navalny, the most prominent foe of Russian President Vladimir Putin, is serving a 19-year sentence on charges of extremism. He had been imprisoned in the Vladimir region of central Russia, about 230 kilometers (140 miles) east of Moscow, but his lawyers said they had not been able to reach him since Dec. 6.
His spokesperson, Kira Yarmysh, said he was located in a prison colony in the town of Kharp, in the Yamalo-Nenets region about 1,900 kilometers (1,200 miles) northeast of Moscow. Navalny is “fine — at least as much as possible after such a long stage” and a lawyer visited him, Yarmysh told The Associated Press.
Yarmysh said the transfer was connected with the campaign for the Russian presidential election in March. While Putin’s reelection is all but certain, given his overwhelming control over the country’s political scene and a widening crackdown on dissent, Navalny’s supporters and other critics hope to use the campaign to erode public support for the Kremlin leader and his military action in Ukraine.
“They deliberately sent him to this particular colony precisely to isolate Alexei as much as possible, so as not to give him any opportunity to communicate with the outside world,” she said. “This is all happening precisely because Alexei, even though he is in prison, is still the main opponent of Vladimir Putin ... It is not surprising that they began to transfer him to another colony right now, so that he could not interfere with Putin’s campaign.”
Navalny has been behind bars in Russia since January 2021, when he returned to Moscow after recuperating in Germany from nerve agent poisoning that he blamed on the Kremlin. Before his arrest, he campaigned against official corruption and organized major anti-Kremlin protests. He has since received three prison terms and spent months in isolation in Penal Colony No. 6 for alleged minor infractions. He has rejected all charges against him as politically motivated.
(With inputs from AP)
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