Jailed Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny has been declared missing by his lawyers and allies just days after Vladimir Putin announced he would run for a fifth presidential term next year.
Mr Navalny, 47, who is serving a 19-year-term on charges of extremism, was due to appear in court on Monday via videolink but did not show up, his spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh said.
His lawyers said they have not been able to contact him since last Tuesday and that his whereabouts are now unknown.
The Russian opposition figure has been behind bars since January 2021, when he returned from Germany having recovered from a nerve agent poisoning attempt that he blamed on the Kremlin.
Russian President Vladimir Putin delivers his speech as he attends a flag-raising ceremony for newly-built nuclear submarines at the Sevmash shipyard today— (AP)
He has since been handed three prison terms and spent months in isolation in a penal colony in the Vladimir region east of Moscow for alleged minor infractions. He has rejected all charges against him as politically motivated.
He is due to be transferred to a “special security” penal colony in what his allies say is linked to Putin’s announcement last week that he would run for a fifth presidential term.
The Russian autocrat is already the longest service leader since Josef Stalin.
“Today, as on Friday, the lawyers tried to get to IK-6 and IK-7 — two colonies in the Vladimir region where Alexei Navalny might be. They have just been informed simultaneously in both colonies that he is not there,” Ms Yarmysh said. “We still don’t know where Alexei is.”
She added: “They refuse to say where he was transferred.”
When Mr Nalavnly did not show up to his court appearance today, Ms Yarmysh said she was told by prison officials that it was due to electricity problems.
Mr Navalny’s aide, Lyubov Sobol, said last week that she feared the relocation to a special security penal colony was linked to the start of Putin’s presidential election campaign.
“They are so afraid of Navalny, who is in prison, who has limited correspondence rights, can’t see his family and so on, that during the period when Putin would declare, they decided to just cut off Navalny as far as possible from the outside world. God forbid he should make some kind of statement,” she said.
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny looks at photographers from inside a glass cage in the Babuskinsky District Court in Moscow— (Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)
Bill Browder, a US financier who was formerly the largest foreign investor in Russia before being banned from re-entering the country by Putin, said the news of Mr Navalny’s disappearance was “alarming and disturbing”.
Mr Browder told The Independent: “It’s clear that Putin wants Navalny to disappear, particularly since Putin announced his plan to serve another term as president.”
The human rights activist added: “The only question is what the Russian authorities have done to Navalny now. Having collapsed last week and then ‘losing him’ in the prison system, the situation is extremely alarming and disturbing.”
Ms Yarmysh said last Friday that Mr Navalny had recently fallen ill, adding that this made his disappearance even more concerning.
She said: “He felt dizzy and lay down on the floor. Prison officials rushed to him, unfolded the bed, put Alexei on it and gave him an IV drip. We don’t know what caused it, but given that he’s being deprived of food, kept in a cell without ventilation and has been offered minimal outdoor time, it looks like fainting out of hunger.”
She added, however, that lawyers visited him after the incident and he looked “more or less fine.”
Putin announced his intention to run for a fifth presidential term last Friday, a day after the Russian Election Commission set the date for the next election for 17 March, 2024.
The Russian autocrat announced his widely expected decision to run after a stage-managed Kremlin awards ceremony, where war veterans pleaded with him to seek re-election.
“I won’t hide it from you – I had various thoughts about it over time, but now, you’re right, it’s necessary to make a decision,” Mr Putin said in a video released by the Kremlin after the event. “I will run for president of the Russian Federation.”
Only hours after the Thursday date setting, two of Mr Navalny’s lawyers who have also been jailed on trumped up charges had their pre-trial detention extended to 13 March. The courts did not provide a reason why.
Igor Girkin, an ultranationalist who had recently been critical of Putin and who had stated his intention to run for the presidency before being arrested, also had his pre-trial detention extended by six months on Thursday.
