Those closest to Navalny assume that the Russian opposition leader has been transferred to another prison, but point out that prison transfers in Russia can take days or even weeks, and are often shrouded in secrecy.
“For all this time we don’t know Alexei’s whereabouts, he’s been lonely and handed over to the regime that has already tried to kill him once,” Navalny’s spokeswoman Kira Yarmesh said on social media.
Leonid Volkov, Navalny’s strongest ally, also added on the social network Telegram, that the Kremlin opponent’s lawyer tried to visit him this Tuesday and was told that he would not be there.
“We do not know where Alexei is now and which prison he was taken to,” Volkov said.
Navalny, a politician who has been a vocal opponent of Russian President Vladimir Putin, was arrested in January 2021 after returning from Germany, where he was recovering from a nerve agent poisoning he said was planned by the Kremlin.
At the time, he was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for violating his parole.
In March, the politician and activist was also sentenced to nine years in prison for fraud and contempt of court, charges that Navalny deemed politically motivated and an attempt to keep him in prison as long as possible.
The judge ordered a Russian government critic to serve the new sentence in a maximum security prison, to which he will be transferred after losing his court appeal in early June.
With the consolidation of Navalny’s rule, there was also a new wave of repression by the Kremlin against supporters of the Russian opposition, as well as against other opposition activists or independent journalists, in an attempt to stifle political opposition.
Some of Navalny’s main supporters have already faced criminal charges and been forced to leave their country.
The political infrastructure of Navalny’s supporters, consisting of an anti-corruption institution and a network of regional offices, was also destroyed, after it was identified as an extremist organization.
The name of Navalny and his other associates now appears in the Russian registry of terrorists and extremists.
“Hardcore alcohol maven. Hipster-friendly analyst. Introvert. Devoted social media advocate.”
