Jailed Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny has been tracked down to a penal colony north of the Arctic Circle, his spokeswoman said on Monday, after supporters lost touch with him for more than two weeks, Reuters reports.
Navalny, 47, was tracked down to the IK-3 penal colony in Kharp in the Yamal-Nenets region, about 1,900 km north east of Moscow, spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh said. Navalny's lawyer managed to see him on Monday, she added.
"This prison will be much worse than the one that was before," Yarmysh told Reuters. "They are trying to make his life as unbearable as it possibly can be."
"They definitely try to isolate Alexei and to make it more difficult to access him," said Yarmysh, who refused to disclose her location due to security concerns.
Navalny's allies, who had been preparing for his expected transfer to a "special regime" colony, the harshest grade in Russia's prison system, said he had not been seen by his lawyers since Dec. 6 and raised the alarm about his fate.
Navalny's new home, known as "the Polar Wolf" colony, is considered to be one of the toughest prisons in Russia, according to Reuters. Most prisoners there have been convicted of grave crimes. Winters are harsh - and temperatures are due to drop to around minus 28 Celsius there over the next week.
Navalny, one of Russian President Vladimir Putin's most prominent critics, was arrested in January of 2021 for alleged parole violations after returning from Germany, where he had been recovering from being poisoned with a military-grade nerve agent.
He was later sentenced by a Russian court to a three-and-a-half-year sentence, though his lawyer said he would serve only two years and eight months in jail because of time he has already spent under house arrest.
In March of 2021, Navalny launched a hunger strike to protest the authorities’ failure to provide proper treatment for his back and leg pains. He subsequently ended the hunger strike on the advice of his doctors.
In August, a Russian court convicted Navalny on charges of extremism and sentenced him to 19 years in prison.
The United States on Monday welcomed reports that Navalny had been located but remained "deeply concerned" about his well-being, the US State Department said, calling for his immediate release and describing his detention as "unjust."