Alexei Navalny’s whereabouts unknown after reported removal from prison

Alexei Navalny, the most high-profile Russian critic of Vladimir Putin has been transferred from his prison and moved to an unknown location, a top aide said on Tuesday.

“Where Alexei is now, and which colony he is being taken to, we don’t know,” Leonid Volkov, Navalny’s chief of staff, said in a statement on the Telegram app.

Navalny is currently serving more than 11 years. He was jailed last year for two-and-a-half years and in March was sentenced to an extra nine years for fraud and contempt of court.

Last month he was charged in a new criminal case and faces an extra 15 years in jail on a charge of creating an extremist organisation and inciting hate towards the authorities.

In March, Navalny denounced Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and called Putin an “insane tsar”.

“The war was intended to cover up the robbery of Russian citizens and divert their attention away from the country’s internal problems,” Navalny told a court hearing from behind bars.

He has also claimed the invasion was “stupid” and “built on lies”.

A long-time critic of Putin and his corruption, Navalny was poisoned in 2020 with a nerve agent during a campaigning trip in Siberia, according to analysis conducted by multiple European medical institutions.

With his life in danger he was subsequently rushed to Germany and after months of medical treatment in Germany, he was arrested for parole violations when he returned to Russia at the start of 2021.

Following the invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin has accelerated its decades-long campaign to quash and silence Russia’s domestic opposition.

Navalny had been serving his sentence at the prosaically-named Correctional Colony No. 2, a prison camp in Pokrov, 74 miles (119km) east of Moscow.

Navalny’s political network has been largely dismantled since his jailing, having been banned as an “extremist” organisation. Senior aides and organisers have either been jailed or forced into exile.

LAter, regional prison observer Sergey Yazhan said that Navalny had been taken to the IK-6 penal colony at Melekhovo near Vladimir, about 250 km (155 miles) east of Moscow, but this was not confirmed.

Yazhan is chairman of the local Public Monitoring Commission, an organisation tasked with protecting the rights of prisoners in each Russian region and working closely with prison authorities.

Russia’s prison service could not immediately be reached for comment.