“We still don’t know where Alexei is,” said a spokeswoman for Navalny. So far he has been connected to the court hearing via video from the prison camp. However, he is no longer there.
Because there has been no sign of life from the imprisoned Kremlin opponent Alexei Navalny for days, concerns about the 47-year-old are growing. In prison camps six and seven in the Vladimir region, the lawyer has now been informed that Navalny is not there, said the opposition spokesman, Kira Yarmysch, on the X news service (formerly Twitter). There was still no answer on Friday about Navalny’s whereabouts. Now the supervisors have apparently been allowed to tell the lawyer that Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin’s opponent is no longer there.
“We still don’t know where Alexei is,” said Yarmysh. Concerns about Navalny’s health increased the morning after he again missed a court hearing. It is already the sixth day on which it is not clear “what will happen to him”. The politician’s lawsuits against the prison authorities are currently being heard in a court in the city of Kovrov.
Since Thursday, Navalny has not been connected to the trial as usual. The prison camp’s management justified this with alleged problems with the power supply, wrote Jarmysch. Last week, a prison camp representative told journalists that the problems would be resolved as quickly as possible. At the same time, the lawyers have no longer been allowed access to Navalny since last Wednesday.
“Russia without Putin” campaign launched
Concerns about Navalny are particularly great because, according to Yarmysch, he became sick in his cell two weeks ago. Letters from or to Navalny would also not be delivered. Navalny’s team also launched the “Russia without Putin” campaign last week with a view to the presidential election on March 17, 2024. The team called for people to vote for other candidates to prevent the 71-year-old Kremlin leader from being re-elected.
Navalny was most recently in a prison camp in the city of Kovrov in the Vladimir region, around 260 kilometers east of Moscow. He was sentenced to 19 years in a prison camp and is internationally classified as a political prisoner. The opposition figure, who also complained about torture in custody, barely survived an assassination attempt using the chemical warfare agent Novichok in August 2020. Navalny had blamed Putin and a hit squad from the domestic secret service FSB for the attack.
Source: Stern
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