Putin desperate to try and crush jailed Navalny’s influence, allies of opposition leader say

Vladimir Putin will try to “hide” jailed Alexei Navalny as long as possible during his protracted election campaign, allies of the imprisoned Russian opposition leader, lawyer and anti-corruption activist have said.

Mr Navalny, who is serving a 19-year sentence on extremism charges, has not been seen since last Tuesday.

Prison officers at IK-6, a high-security penal colony roughly 140 miles east of Moscow where Mr Navalny was moved in June this year, told his lawyers that he had “left their colony” when they tried to visit him last week. The officers added that they did not know where Mr Navalny had been transferred.

The 47-year-old has since missed two court appearances via videolink. Prison officials said his first absence, on Monday, was due to electricity problems, a reason his spokesperson Kira Yarmysh described as “nonsense”. His second absence was today (Tuesday); no reason for this absence was provided.

Mr Navalny’s disappearance has coincided with an announcement by the Russian president last Friday that he would run for a fifth term next year. The Russian Election Commission issued a statement a day before setting the date for the vote for 17 March.

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Mr Navalny’s allies have now accused the Kremlin of “deliberately isolating Alexei” for as long as possible until the election next year.

Ms Yarmysh told the Associated Press: “I guess this was made deliberately to isolate Alexei during this period of time so he wouldn’t be able to influence all these things in any way, because everyone understands – and Putin, of course, understands – that Alexei is his main rival, even despite the fact that he is not on the ballot.”

She added: “They will try to hide him as long as possible.”

After the announcement by the Russian Election Commission on Thursday, a statement from prison by Mr Navalny urged Russians to vote for anyone but Putin. It was unclear if it was a pre-written statement dated from before he was last seen.

The statement read: “For Putin, the 2024 elections are a referendum to approve his actions, to approve the war.

“Let’s disrupt his plans and make it happen so that no one on 17 March is interested in the rigged result, but that all of Russia saw and understood: the will of the majority is that Putin must leave.”

That same day, two of his lawyers, who had also been jailed on bogus charges, had their pretrial detention extended to 13 March. The Kremlin did not provide any reason why.

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Prison officials are legally obliged to notify Mr Navalny’s relatives or lawyers within 10 days of his arrival at a new facility.

But in the meantime, Ms Yarmysh said they are “having to look for him in every colony of [the] special regime in Russia”.

“There are about 30 of them all over Russia,” she said. “So we have no idea in which one we will find him.”

She said the Kremlin, by way of circumventing the legal obligation, “can also transfer a prisoner for weeks or even for months, and no one will know where he is”.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov, when asked about the whereabouts of Mr Navalny said they “have neither a desire nor an opportunity to track down inmates”.

“We have neither the intention nor the ability to monitor the fate of prisoners and the process of their stay in the relevant institutions,” he told reporters.

Mr Navalny, 47, has been behind bars since January 2021, when he was arrested upon his return from Germany where he had received treatment for poisoning with a nerve agent that Navalny blamed on the Kremlin. Moscow has denied it.

The opposition leader, who campaigned against official corruption and organised major anti-government protests, has rejected all charges against him as a politically motivated vendetta.