Lawyers for Alexei Navalny say he's been missing for a week
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Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, second from the left, with his legal team in a penal colony east of Moscow in August 2023. Photo: Alexander Nemenov/AFP via Getty Images
Lawyers for jailed Russian opposition leader and Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny said they have not been able to contact him for at least seven days and that he did not appear at a now-postponed trial on Tuesday.
Why it matters: Navalny's disappearance coincides with the start of the Russian election season, as he went missing just days before Russian President Vladimir Putin announced he'll run for another six-year term.
- Despite being in prison, Navalny — who has been one of the most outspoken critics of Putin's government — is still the figurehead of the country's suppressed opposition movement.
What they're saying: Kira Yarmysh, Navalny's spokesperson, said on Tuesday an employee at the penal colony where Navalny was believed to be held said he'd recently left.
- Yarmysh said the employee, who was not named, did not know where Navalny had been transferred.
- Ivan Zhdanov, the director of Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation, said a representative of the colony, when asked by the judge overseeing thet trial about Navalny's whereabouts, said he didn't know.
- The representative recommended contacting the Federal Penitentiary Service, an agency within the Kremlin in charge of the country's correctional services.
- Zhdanov said Navalny's lawyers had made inquiries about his location and written complaints about his disappearance but had no answers.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov claimed Tuesday that the Kremlin did not know where Navalny was because it lacked the intention and ability to monitor status of prisoners, according to Russian-state media.
In August, Navalny was sentenced to 19 years in prison on charges related to founding groups that were retroactively labeled by a Russian court as being "extremist."
- In reality, the organizations — which were founded to expose financial malfeasance in the Kremlin — were labeled as being extremist only after they published investigations into alleged corruption by high-ranking Russian government officials.
- He received the additional sentence as he was already serving an 11-year sentence for allegedly committing fraud and being in contempt of court for fleeing to Germany to recover from a poisoning attempt by Russia's security forces in 2020.
- The charges against Navalny and the trials and sentences he's received have been denounced by the West as being politically motivated.
In October, in a major blow to what little remained of the rule of law in Russia, authorities arrested lawyers representing Navalny, claiming they too committed extremist offenses by being associated with the anti-corruption organizations.
- Yarmysh said then that the arrests were part of a continued Kremlin-led effort to isolate Navalny, reduce his political influence and limit his ability to receive legal representation.
The big picture: Navalny previously attempted to run for president against Putin in the 2018 presidential election but was banned from the race by the country's election commission.
- Last year, Navalny said he was transferred to a high-security penal colony IK-6 in Melekhovo, which is about 155 miles east of Moscow.
- Former IK-6 inmates have accused the colony's guards of beating, humiliating and raping prisoners, according to the Washington Post.
- Navalny has suffered from serious health issues since entering the prison system.
Go deeper: Putin will seek another presidential term in Russia's election next year
