Jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny is in a penal colony in the Yamal-Nenets region of Russia, his spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh said.
“We have found Alexei Navalny. He is now in IK-3 in the settlement of Kharp in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District. His lawyer visited him today. Alexei is doing well,” Kira Yarmysh said on social media.
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 has not been seen by his lawyers since 6 December and raised the alarm about his fate.
“Many thanks to our supporters, activists, journalists and the media who are concerned about Alexei’s fate and who do not get tired of writing about the situation,” Navalny’s lawyer Ivan Zhdanov said.
Mr Zhdanov said his supporters sent 618 requests for information about the location of Navalny, who had been held at a penal colony 235km east of Moscow.
Navalny, who in the 2010s brought tens of thousands of people onto the streets to oppose Vladimir Putin’s rule, was detained in January 2021 after returning to Moscow from Germany, where he had been treated for what Western experts said was poisoning by a Soviet-era nerve agent.
