The Russian prison service is obliged to inform the women’s relatives of their location within 10 days of their arrival.

The Mordovia camp, known for its harsh conditions, is the same one where the only woman convicted in the Yukos oil case that saw the jailing of Russia’s former richest man Mikhail Khodorkovsky, lawyer Svetlana Bakhmina, served time from 2006 until October 2008.

The Perm camp is seen as a more pleasant option since it is in a city, although Perm is about 1,400 kilometres from Moscow where Alyokhina’s young son lives.

The two women were sentenced to two years for hooliganism motivated by religious hatred after they performed a “punk prayer” in a Moscow cathedral. Bandmate Yekaterina Samutsevich was released on appeal with a suspended sentence because guards grabbed her before she could take part.

Bakhmina, now 43, told opposition magazine that Camp No. 14 had no hot water and the only way to wash was once a week in a Turkish-style bath. Some women used to open radiator valves in winter to get warm water, she said.

While Bakhmina was convicted of the financial crime of embezzlement, she said she lived and slept in a section including murderers.

If Volkova is correct, Tolokonnikova will be in the same camp as Yevgenia Khasis, the partner of a nationalist activist who shot a rights lawyer and a journalist in broad daylight in Moscow in 2009.

Khasis was sentenced to 18 years for complicity in the murders.

The regional prison service posted photographs of a recent visitors’ day at the camp showing the women in shabby green jackets and trousers meeting family members and in the prison chapel.

The camp’s prisoners bake cookies for sale and sew uniforms, the prison service said.

Mordovia in central Russia is a region dotted with lakes that has a large number of prison camps, which grew up in the 1930s as part of the Stalin-era GULAG system of labour camps.