The Russian government took Alexei Navalny out of the prison where he was and now no one knows where he is. His spokesperson shared this information.
Kira Yarmysh wrote on social media that the officials from the Melekhovo prison said he was no longer listed there.
The White House expressed serious worry about the reports.
Mr Navalny’s helpers thought he would be sent to a more strict prison after his sentence was made longer.
They say his vanishing is connected to the new information about the elections.
On Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said he wants to run for president again next March.
In August, Mr. Navalny was accused of starting and financing a group that the government thinks is dangerous. He says he didn’t do it, but he was given 19 more years in prison.
He was already given a nine-year sentence for breaking the rules of his release from prison, committing fraud, and disrespecting the court. Many people think that the accusations against him are driven by politics.
He was told he would have to stay in a special kind of prison called a “special regime colony. ” These prisons are usually for very serious criminals, repeat offenders, and those who have been sentenced to life in prison.
Mr Navalny’s friends said earlier today that they hadn’t heard from him in six days.
He missed some recent court appearances that he usually attended through video. The prison authorities said that the missing people were because of problems with the colony’s technology.
Ms Yarmysh said that the lawyers who were waiting for news outside Melekhovo and a nearby colony were told that he was not registered in either place.
His assistant, Leonid Volkov, said that it is not a coincidence at all and that the Kremlin is directly controlling everything.
Putin knows who his main opponent is in these ‘elections’, it’s not a secret.
He wants to stop Navalny from speaking. Each of us needs to speak up for Navalny.
For over ten years, Mr. Navalny tried to uncover corruption within the Russian government. His videos have been seen by tens of millions of people online.
He was a very likeable leader who could get a lot of people in Russia to join protests against the government.
But in 2020, he was poisoned in Siberia by a nerve agent confirmed by Western labs.
A new report by Bellingcat and The Insider said that some FSB agents were involved in the attack.
After Navalny got better from the attack, he went back to Russia in 2021 even though he was warned that he might get arrested. He got arrested as soon as he got to an airport in Moscow.