Putin’s main political opponent has gone missing

Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny, a fierce critic of President Vladimir Putin and anti-corruption activist, has reportedly gone missing from the penal colony where he had been serving prison time according to his allies. 

Navalny’s lawyers and political aides have been preparing for an expected move to one of the Kremlin’s harshest penal colonies after he was sentenced to nineteen more years in prison on top of his original eleven and a half according to Reuters.

However, the process of moving a prisoner in Russia by rail can take several weeks and one’s lawyers and families often aren’t provided any information about their wellbeing or whereabouts until they reach their destination. 

This is the situation Navalny’s lawyers, aides, and family find themselves in now, but it is not clear if the anti-corruption activist is already making his way to his new prison colony or if he is still awaiting his transfer elsewhere. 

Navalny’s lawyers have made a number of attempts to gain access to two of the penal colonies where they believe the political dissident was thought to be located. However, officials said Navalny was not at either of the colonies. 

“On Friday and throughout today, neither IK-6 nor IK-7 responded to them,” Navaly's spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh was quoted as saying on Twitter by Reuters as she reported the problems Navalny's were facing  lawyers when trying to figure out his location in Russia.

Yarmysh explained in a post on Twitter that Navanly had been missing for six days and that his lawyers were last in contact with him when he was at the IK-6 penal colony, which CNN reported was 150 miles east of Moscow.

Navalny was set to appear in court via video link on December 11th but officials claimed he was prevented from attending due to issues with the electricity at the prison where he was being held at the time according to CNN's reporting.

Yarmysh noted on Twitter that she was concerned for Navalny because of a recent bout of poor health. “The fact that we cannot find Alexey is especially alarming because last week he became ill in his cell,” Yarmysh wrote. 

“He became dizzy and laid down on the floor,” Navalny’s spokeswoman continued. “The colony staff immediately came running, lowered the bed, laid Alexey down and put [him] on an IV,” Yarmysh explained in her Twitter post. 

Yarmysh added that neither she nor anyone else on the 47-year-old’s team knew what happened but noted that Navalny’s food deprivation and the fact he was being held in a cell punishment cell with no ventilation didn’t help. 

Navalny’s walking time had allegedly also been reduced to a minimum by prison officials and Yarmysh noted he looked “like a hungry faint.” The White House has taken notice of the development and raised its concerns over Navalny's disappearance. 

“He should be released immediately. He should never have been jailed in the first place, and we’re going to work with our embassy in Moscow to see how much more we can find out,” said National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby. 

Reports of Navalny’s disappearance broke just days after Vladimir Putin announced that he would be running for a fourth term as the country’s president, which is a position Navalny once sought for himself in 2018. 

Navalny has been an important critic of Putin and his government for over a decade and he has suffered the consequences of his political activism. In August 2020, Navalny was poisoned with the Novichok nerve agent according to BBC News. 

Navalny survived the attempt on his life after he was flown to a hospital in Germany for treatment and he vowed to return to Russia. However, when he did in January of 2021, he was taken into custody by authorities.

CNN noted that Navalny was detained for violating the terms of a probation sentence he was serving related to a 2013 fraud case that was brought against him. A Russian court later sentenced Navalny to two years in prison according to Forbes.

Navalny was sentenced to an additional nine years in prison in 2022, and nineteen more years were added to his jail term in 2023 in what Reuters noted was “designed to cow the Russian people into political submission.”