A Russian diplomat has said the Kremlin is not concerned for the safety of Vladimir Putin’s most high-profile critic, as his whereabouts remain unknown following a prison transfer.
Alexei Navalny, Russia’s most prominent opposition leader, was moved from his prison to an unknown location, a top aide said on Tuesday.
Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesman - who two years ago claimed there was no Novichok and no one was following Navalny - said: “The Kremlin does not track Navalny’s whereabouts and does not share concerns for his safety.”
On Tuesday, Navalny’s spokesperson Kira Yarmysh, tweeted: “The lawyer who came to see [Navalny] was kept at the checkpoint until 2 pm, and then they said: ‘There is no such convict.’ We don’t know where Aleksey is now and to what colony he is being taken.”
Navalny was moved to the IK-6 prison in the village of Melekhovo in the Vladimir region, Russian news agencies reported, citing Sergei Yazhan, chairman of the regional Public Monitoring Commission. Melekhovo is about 250 kilometers (155 miles) east of Moscow.
“All this time we don’t know where Alexei is. He is left alone with the system that has already once tried to kill him,” Yarmysh said earlier on social media. After the transfer was reported, she said his close associates had not been able to independently confirm it.
Lawyer Olga Mikhaylova told Russia’s state news agency Tass that Navalny‘s attorneys were told he was transferred to a maximum-security prison, “but which one, we weren’t told”.
Navalny is currently serving more than 11 years. He was jailed last year for two-and-a-half years and in March was sentenced to an extra nine years for fraud and contempt of court.
Last month he was charged in a new criminal case and faces an extra 15 years in jail on a charge of creating an extremist organisation and inciting hate towards the authorities.
In March, Navalny denounced Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and called Putin an “insane tsar”.
Navalny was poisoned in 2020 with a nerve agent during a campaigning trip in Siberia, according to analysis conducted by multiple European medical institutions.
After months of medical treatment in Germany, he was arrested for parole violations when he returned to Russia at the start of 2021.
