Putin's top critic found in 'most isolated place on Earth' after going missing

25 December 2023 , 14:16

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Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny makes a heart gesture standing in a cage (Image: AP)

Prominent Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny has been found in the Arctic after going missing for nearly three weeks.

His team had had no contact with him since December 6, after he was moved from a previous prison, but today, on Christmas Day, his spokeswoman said the mystery has ended. After what the New York Times called an "exhaustive, frantic search of Russia’s prison system", Navalny was finally located in a prison in the Yamalo-Nenets region of the Russian Arctic. The region is notorious for long and severe winters; the town is near Vorkuta, whose coal mines were among the harshest of the Soviet Gulag prison camp system.

"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, said on X. Navalny, the most prominent opponent of Russian President Vladimir Putin, is serving a 19-year sentence on charges of extremism. He had been imprisoned on bogus charges in the Vladimir region of central Russia, about 140 miles east of Moscow, but his lawyers began to fear the worst after they had not heard from him for weeks.

IK-3 penal colony where jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny was reportedly transferred (AFP via Getty Images)

Ivan Zhdanov, the head of Navalny’s anticorruption foundation, described the facility as one of Russia’s "most northern and most remote" prisons. His team were particularly alarmed when he could not be found because he had been ill and reportedly was being denied food and kept in an unventilated cell.

Supporters believed he was deliberately being hidden after Putin announced his candidacy in Russia’s March presidential election. While Putin’s reelection is all but certain, given his overwhelming control over the country’s political scene and a widening crackdown on dissent, Navalny’s supporters and other critics hope to use the campaign to erode public support for the Kremlin leader and his military action in Ukraine. "Aleksei’s situation is a clear example of how the system treats political prisoners, trying to isolate and suppress them", Zhdanov said on social media.

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The district of Kharp, shown on the map, home to about 5,000 people, is located above the Arctic Circle

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 official corruption and organized major anti-Kremlin protests. He has since received three prison terms and spent months in isolation in Penal Colony No. 6 for alleged minor infractions. He has rejected all charges against him as politically motivated.

Rachel Hagan