Putin’s Biggest Threat Alexei Navalny Missing From Prison For Past Six Days
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest critic, Alexei Navalny, is missing from prison, his team said.
Contact between the opposition leader and his lawyers was cut around six days ago and he was last imprisoned in the IK-6 penal colony east of Moscow.
Some reports have argued that he is no longer listed in the prison, but this has not yet been confirmed. His spokesperson Kira Yarmysh said the vocal critic of Vladimir Putin was due to appear in court today via video link but did not.
Navalny was sentenced to over 30 years in prison on charges he vehemently denies, saying that they’re an attempt by the Kremlin to silence his sharp criticism of Putin.
Three days ago, his aides said Navalny’s lawyers had stood all day outside the colony but had been refused entry to see him.
The chair of Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation wrote that Navalny was suffering a serious health-related incident last week where his “life was at risk”.
In fact, Yarmysh said prison staff had put him on a drip after he suffered a dizzy spell that looked like a hunger faint.
Concerns about his whereabouts were initially shown three days ago which were a couple of days after his health-related incident. Before this, there were occasional letters from him, “albeit censored ones”, but there have been none since.
Navalny survived being poisoned with a highly toxic nerve agent in Siberia three years ago – the Kremlin denied any involvement in this.
Navalny exposed corruption in Putin’s Russia, making him a leading figure in mass protests and a target of the Kremlin.
He has made videos with millions of views campaigning to win over the “insatiable toad, United Russia”, he has been convicted twice on criminal charges, he’s been poisoned and he sought to challenge Putin in the 2018 election – a running cut short because of one of his convictions.
These convictions were for embezzlement and fraud and he received suspended sentences of five and three and a half years.
However, both he and the European Court of Human Rights disputed the charges and denounced them as politically motivated.
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