White House ‘deeply concerned’ as Navalny’s team says he has vanished in Russia’s prison system

The Kremlin critic’s allies said they had been unable to locate him for 6 days. Navalny was serving a 19-year sentence on extremism charges

Navalny’s disappearance coincides with the start of the campaign period for a presidential election. Putin has confirmed he will run for another term

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Jailed Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny on a screen via a video link from his prison during court hearings at Russia’s Supreme Court in Moscow in June. Photo: AFP

Published: 2:23am, 12 Dec 2023Updated: 12:38pm, 12 Dec 2023

Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny has been removed from the penal colony where he had been imprisoned since the middle of last year and his current whereabouts are unknown, his allies said on Monday.

Navalny aides have been preparing for his expected transfer to a “special regime” colony, the harshest grade in Russia’s prison system, after he was sentenced in August to an additional 19 years in prison on top of 11-and-a-half years he was already serving.

The process of moving prisoners by rail across Russia’s vast territory can take weeks, with lawyers and family unable to obtain information about their location and well-being until they reach their destination. It was unclear if Navalny was already in transit to a new prison.

Navalny’s spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh said staff at the IK-6 facility in Melekhovo, 235km (145 miles) east of Moscow, had told his lawyer waiting outside that the opposition leader was no longer among its inmates.

“Where they have taken him, they refuse to say,” she said on social media platform X.