The imprisoned Russian opponent Alexei Navalni, who his entourage had not heard from for almost three weeks, was transferred to a prison colony in the remote region of Jarp, in the Russian Arctic, three months before the presidential elections.
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“We have found Navalni. He is in prison colony number 3 in the town of Jarp,” said Kira Yarmish on the X network, adding that the opponent “is doing well” and that his lawyer visited him this Monday.
Navalny, a charismatic anti-corruption activist and sworn enemy of President Vladimir Putin, is serving a 19-year prison sentence for “extremism.” He was detained in January 2021 upon his return to Russia, after recovering in Germany from a poisoning that he claims was orchestrated by the Kremlin.
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The 47-year-old opponent had disappeared at the beginning of December from the prison colony in the Vladimir region, 250 km from Moscow. where he was detained until now. This meant that he had probably been transferred.
The town of Jarp, with 5,000 inhabitants, is located in Yamalia-Nenetsia, a remote region in northern Russia. It is located beyond the Arctic Circle and is home to several penal colonies.
According to one of his closest collaborators, Ivan Jdanov, it is “one of the northernmost and most remote colonies” of Russia. Conditions there are “difficult,” he said in X.
Plan to isolate it
According to the verdict for “extremism” pronounced against him, the opponent has to serve his sentence in a “special regime” colony, the category where the detention conditions are harsher and which is normally intended for those sentenced to prison. life sentence or the most dangerous inmates.
“From the beginning, it was clear that the authorities wanted to isolate Alexei, especially before the election.“presidential planned in March 2024, Jdanov added.
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Transfers from one center or another in Russia can take several weeks of travel by train, in stages. And the detainees' environment is not informed during that period.
This lack of news about Navalny raised concern in several Western countries and the UN. The United States said it was “deeply concerned” and once again demanded the release of the opponent.
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Navalny's movement has been methodically undermined by Russian authorities in recent years, and many of his collaborators and allies are in prison or in exile. At the beginning of December, the authorities initiated new legal actions for “vandalism” against the opponent, which could lead to three more years of detention.
In this context, with the opposition at a minimum and the repression of any critical voice, Putin aspires without problems to a new six-year mandate at the head of the country in the presidential elections next March.
AFP
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