Russian prison authorities remain silent on Navalny’s whereabouts

MOSCOW — Supporters of the imprisoned Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny say they have had no contact with him for a week.

Navalny was not connected by video to a court hearing in the city of Kovrov on Tuesday, his spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh wrote on the news service X, formerly Twitter.

She added that an employee of the IK-6 detention centre had said that the prisoner had “left the colony.” “Where they transferred him to, he allegedly doesn’t know,” Yarmysh wrote in the post.

Yarmysh added that the authorities had at least moved away from the long-standing claim that Navalny could not be connected due to problems with the power supply in the camp.

The guards were allowed to say on Monday that the vocal opponent of Russian president Vladimir Putin was no longer in the camp in the Vladimir region east of Moscow.

There has now been no sign of the opposition activist, who was sentenced to 19 years in prison, for a week.

One of his lawyers, Alexei Tsvetkov, told Russian media that the last time he saw his client was last Tuesday. Since then, Tsvetkov has had no more information about Navalny’s whereabouts. However, the lawyer did not rule out the possibility that the political prisoner had been transferred to another camp.

Navalny’s wife Yulia pointed out on Instagram that her husband had not been connected to the hearing in Kovrov via video on Monday. “The whereabouts of Alexei Navalny remain unknown,” she wrote.

The spokesman for the U.S. State Department, Matthew Miller, again called for Navalny’s release on Monday and blamed the Russian government for his fate.

In Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov responded by accusing the U.S. of interfering in internal Russian affairs. He did not comment on Navalny’s whereabouts. “We have neither the desire nor the ability to follow the fate of prisoners and their whereabouts in the relevant places,” said Peskov.

Navalny’s reputation as an opposition politician in Russia is based on his revelations of corruption in the ruling class and his organization of protests. However, he has also been criticized for earlier nationalist statements. In August 2020, Navalny narrowly survived an assassination attempt using the chemical agent Novichok. The Kremlin opponent blames Putin and the FSB domestic intelligence service for the attack.