According to his associates, Alexei Navalny has been taken out of the IK-6 penal colony in the Vladimir region, east of Moscow. It is unknown where the opposition politician from Russia is now. Alexei Navalny’s spokesman Kira Yarmysh said that staff at the IK-6 colony in the town of Melekhovo had informed his lawyer that the opposition leader was no longer among its inmates, as his aides prepared for his potential transfer to a harsher-regime colony after he was sentenced in August to an additional 19 years in prison, according to news agency Reuters.
On the social media site X (previously Twitter), Kira Yarmysh stated, “Where they have taken him, they refuse to say.”
The absence of Alexei Navalny coincides with the commencement of the presidential election campaign, in which Vladimir Putin is seeking reelection for a another six-year term. Leonid Volkov, an assistant to Alexei Navalny, stated on X that the timing was “100% direct manual political control from the Kremlin and 0% coincidence.”
“It is no secret to Putin who his main opponent is in these ‘elections’. And he wants to make sure that Navalny’s voice is not heard,” he averred.
Alexei Navalny claimed to have vanished, but the Kremlin did not reply.
By means of his attorneys, Alexei Navalny has frequently denounced Vladimir Putin for the conflict in Ukraine and assailed the Kremlin by detailing his imprisonment experience. In October, three of his attorneys were detained on charges of engaging in “extremist” behavior.
