Putin critic found in isolated penal colony above Arctic Circle

MOSCOW — Associates of imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny said Monday that he had been located at a prison colony above the Arctic Circle nearly three weeks after contact with him was lost.

Navalny, the most prominent foe of Russian President Vladimir Putin, is serving a 19-year sentence after being convicted of extremism.

He was previously imprisoned in the Vladimir region of central Russia, about 140 miles east of Moscow, but his lawyers said they hadn’t been able to reach him since Dec. 6.

His spokesperson, Kira Yarmysh, said they learned that Navalny had been relocated to a prison colony in the town of Kharp in the Yamalo-Nenets region, more than 1,000 miles northeast of Moscow.

A lawyer has since visited Navalny, who is “fine — at least as much as possible after such a long stage,” Yarmysh told the Associated Press.

The region is notorious for long and severe winters. The town is about 65 miles from Vorkuta, whose coal mines were among the harshest sites of the gulag labor camp system during the Soviet era.

“It is almost impossible to get to this colony; it is almost impossible to even send letters there. This is the highest possible level of isolation from the world,” Navalny’s chief strategist, Leonid Volkov, posted on X, formerly Twitter.

Transfers within Russia’s prison system are shrouded in secrecy, and contact with inmates can be lost for several weeks. Navalny’s team was particularly alarmed when he couldn’t be found because he had been ill and reportedly was being denied food and kept in an unventilated cell.

Yarmysh asserted that the transfer was connected with Russia’s presidential election in March. Putin’s reelection is all but certain, given his control over the country’s political scene and a widening crackdown on dissent — but his critics hope to use the campaign to erode public support for the Kremlin leader and his military action in Ukraine.

“They deliberately sent [Navalny] to this particular colony precisely in order to isolate Alexei as much as possible, so as not to give him any opportunity to communicate with the outside world,” Yarmysh said. “This is all happening precisely because Alexei, despite the fact that he is in prison, is still the main opponent of Vladimir Putin . ... It is not surprising that they began to transfer him to another colony right now, so that he could not interfere with Putin’s campaign.”

Navalny has been behind bars in Russia since January 2021, when he returned to Moscow after recuperating in Germany from nerve agent poisoning that he blamed on the Kremlin. Before his arrest, he campaigned against government corruption and organized major protests.

He has since received three prison terms and spent months in isolation. He has rejected all charges against him as politically motivated.