MOSCOW.- The imprisoned opposition leader of Russia Alexei Navalny was located in a penal colony above the Arctic Circle, relatives said on Monday, three weeks after losing contact with him.
Navalny, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s most prominent critic, is serving a 19-year prison 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 say they were unable to contact him as of Dec. 6.
His spokeswoman, Kira Yarmysh, said on X, formerly Twitter, that Navalny was located in a penal colony in Kharp, a town in the Yamalo-Nenets region about 1,900 kilometers (1,200 miles) northeast of Moscow.
Navalny “is fine, at least as good as he can be after so much time” and a lawyer visited him, Yarmysh said.
That region is notorious for its long, harsh winters. The town is near Vorkuta, whose coal mines were among the most arduous in the gulag, the Soviet system of prison camps.
“It is almost impossible to reach this neighborhood; It is almost impossible to even send letters there. “This is the maximum possible level of isolation of the world,” Navalny’s chief strategist Leonid Volkov wrote in X.
Prisoner transfers in Russia are carried out under the strictest secrecy and sometimes weeks pass without the prisoner being heard from. Navalny’s team was alarmed to lose contact with him, especially because he was sick and was reportedly denied food and kept in an unventilated cell.
His supporters suspect he was intentionally isolated after Putin announced his plans to run for re-election in the March elections. While Putin’s re-election is all but assured, given his overwhelming control over the country’s political system and repression of dissidents, Navalny supporters and other opponents hope they can use the campaign to undermine support for him.
“He was sent on purpose to this particular colony, precisely to isolate Alexei as much as possible, to not give him any opportunity to communicate with the outside world,” the spokeswoman said.
“All this is happening precisely because Alexei, even though he is in prison, is still Vladimir Putin’s main rival…It is not surprising that he has been transferred to another colony now, to prevent him from interfering in Putin’s campaign.”
Navalny has been imprisoned since January 2021, when he returned to Moscow from Germany, where he recovered from an attempt to poison him that he attributes to the Kremlin. Before his arrest, he campaigned against official corruption and organized anti-government protests.
Since then he has received three prison sentences, and spent months incommunicado in Penal Colony Number 6 for alleged infractions. Navalny rejects all accusations against him, considering them politically motivated.
Source: With information from AP
