The Kremlin has warned the West that the disappearance of the opponent Alexei Navalny (Butyn, in the Moscow region, 47 years old) is strictly its matter, although it has ignored requests to clarify his whereabouts. “We neither have the intention nor are we able to follow the fate of the inmates and the procedures of the institutions [carcelarias]”, the spokesman for the Russian president, Dmitri Peskov, said this Tuesday, following the concern that both the EU and the United States have expressed about the lack of news from the opponent. Peskov has stressed that the fate of the dissident, who has been missing for a week, is only in the hands of his justice: “We are talking about a prisoner who was convicted under Russian law and is serving his sentence. “Here we consider any interference, including that of the United States, unacceptable and inadmissible.”
European and North American diplomacy has joined the pleas from those closest to the opponent to know his whereabouts. “Navalni's disappearance for seven days is very worrying news. “The Russian political leadership is responsible and will be held accountable for his safety and his health in prison,” has warned in Xthe new name of Twitter, the high representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, before insisting on his release: “The bloc reiterates its call for his immediate and unconditional release from politically imprisoned motivated.”
Navalni's representative definitively raised the alarm this Monday. Kira Yarmish reported that officials at the IK-6 prison in the Vladimir region, more than 230 kilometers east of Moscow, told the dissident's lawyers that he was no longer there after unsuccessfully trying to visit him since December 6. . This Monday the US Government added to the concern of the opponent's entourage, which showed its concern about the uncertain fate of the Russian politician.
“We do not have any information about his whereabouts. “We are deeply concerned about the well-being of Mr. Navalni after his lawyers stated that they have not been able to contact him in almost a week and he did not appear at the court hearing scheduled for today,” said US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller on Monday. .
“We have communicated to the Russian Government that they are responsible for what happens to Mr. Navalny while he is in their custody and that they will respond to the international community,” added Miller, who called on Moscow “to end its continued repression of “Russia's independent voices.” “We will follow the cases of everyone who has been illegally detained in Russia,” the State Department spokesperson promised.
The spokesman for the North American National Security Council, John Kirby, also demanded that his whereabouts be clarified. He has been missing for a week and neither his representatives nor his family know where he is. He should be released, but he should never have been imprisoned in the first place,” Kirby told the American press while flying on Air Force One on an official trip alongside President Joe Biden.
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The Russian news channel Baza assures that the dissident is being transferred from the IK-6 prison in Vladimir, more than 230 kilometers east of Moscow, to the capital to continue with the procedures of a new criminal case opened against him. According to one of his sources, Navalny, imprisoned since January 2021, will be tried in Moscow for an alleged crime of group vandalism. The prison sentence contemplated under that article, 214 of the Russian Penal Code, is up to three years in prison.
This same Tuesday, a new judicial hearing by videoconference of the leader of the Anti-Corruption Foundation, an organization that the Russian authorities have declared an “extremist organization,” was suspended. Concerned to know what has happened to the activist, his closest circle asks for any kind of help. “We promise a reward for obtaining reliable and complete information,” announced Iván Zhdanov, jurist and director of Navalny's foundation.
Russian lawyers explain that the transfer of a prisoner from one prison to another can take up to a month and be carried out in an opaque manner. However, the disappearance of the opponent has coincided with the informal start of the Russian electoral campaign, whose three-day elections will end on March 17. The Kremlin revealed Putin's candidacy for a fifth term on December 8, a day after the central electoral committee set the date of the elections and Navalni's team launched a campaign against the Russian president in which he asked vote for any other candidacy except yours.
That same December 7, a Moscow court extended the preventive detention of three of Navalny's lawyers, arrested in October on charges of being part of an alleged extremist organization. The authorities are calling for his imprisonment for allegedly passing on Navalni's writings, held in a prison under a strict control regime, to his political team. The Platform against Corruption was declared “extremist” in 2021, and this implies that any contact or collaboration with its members is a crime.
Navalni is sentenced to three decades in prison in total for three different sentences: one of 19 years in prison for having led the Anti-Corruption Foundation, an organization that has been declared extremist by the Kremlin; another of nine and a half years for allegedly defrauding tens of thousands of euros from three of his thousands of donors, whom Navalni's team in turn accuses of having set a trap; and his first sentence, three and a half years for having violated the terms of his probation when he was hospitalized in Germany in 2020 after he was poisoned on a trip in Siberia.
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