Lawyers representing Alexey Navalny conveyed on Monday that communication with the incarcerated Russian opposition leader has been severed. Navalny’s location, presumed to be within a penal colony approximately 150 miles east of Moscow, remains elusive.
In August, Navalny received a 19-year prison sentence after being found guilty of establishing an extremist community, funding extremist activities, and an array of other offenses.
Prior to this, he was already serving an 11-and-a-half-year sentence in a high-security facility for charges, including fraud, which he vehemently denies.
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Proponents of Navalny assert that his arrest and imprisonment are politically motivated endeavors aimed at quashing his critiques of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Despite persistent efforts by legal representatives to gain access to two penal colonies where Navalny was believed to be held, spokesperson Kira Yarmysh disclosed on Monday that neither the IK-6 nor IK-7 penal colonies responded.
Navalny, grappling with severe health complications, has been unaccounted for the past six days. His last known imprisonment was in the IK-6 penal colony east of Moscow.
Navalny had emerged as a formidable challenge to Putin’s authority during his more than two-decade-long tenure. In 2020, the dissident was transported from Russia to Germany after being poisoned with Novichok, a Soviet-era nerve agent. The incident unfolded in Omsk, Siberia, prompting Navalny’s airlift to a Berlin hospital while comatose.
A collaborative investigation by CNN and Bellingcat implicated the Russian Security Service (FSB) in the poisoning. Despite evidence, Russia steadfastly denies any involvement in Navalny’s poisoning.
In December 2020, Putin remarked that if the Russian security service had sought to eliminate Navalny, they would have successfully carried out the task.
