Suddenly disappeared – will Navalny be handed over? The Kremlin is playing dumb

“Alexei is internationally known. It is impossible to imagine that no one knows where he is,” said the director of the Anti-Corruption Foundation founded by Navalny, Ivan Zhdanov, in exile in the EU.

Zhdanov also checked information spread by Russian media that Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin’s fiercest opponent may have been brought to Moscow for new investigations into the next criminal trial. But no.

Woman sounds the alarm
The German federal government, the EU and the US are concerned because Navalny, who is internationally recognized as a political prisoner, is also in poor health. “Alexei is missing”, not least his wife Yulia Navalnaya is sounding the alarm on Instagram. The couple has two children.

Navalny has been in custody for almost three years since returning from Germany in January 2021 – and was arrested at Moscow airport. He had previously been treated at the Berlin Charité after a poison attack. To this day, he and his team are convinced that an assassination squad from the domestic secret service FSB, controlled by Putin, was behind the attack using the Novichok chemical weapon.

The Kremlin rejects this. Only in August was his prison sentence increased to 19 years for alleged extremism in another trial that was criticized as a political orchestration.

Navalny launched a new anti-Putin campaign
Almost no one considers the fact that Navalny’s disappearance coincides with the start of Putin’s next bid for the presidency in the March 17 elections as a coincidence.

On December 7, Navalny’s team launched the “Russia without Putin” campaign. The Kremlin’s opponents are calling on citizens to vote for any candidate – just not for Putin, who had the constitution changed so he could run for office again.

The elections are a parody. “But every election, even the most fraudulent, is a time of doubt. “People are thinking about who is in power and why,” the campaign website says. The main task of the opposition and honest citizens is therefore to dispel these doubts and make it clear to people that Putin is damaging the country.

Even in prison, Navalny remained obnoxious
With his fight against Putin, which was also waged from the prison camp, Navalny is a thorn in the Moscow power system even in prison. He has repeatedly used his appearances in various legal proceedings against the penal system to criticize Russia’s leadership and especially Putin’s war against Ukraine. But on several occasions, Navalny was not connected to the trials by video as usual, which authorities explained as technical problems.

Meanwhile, Navalny’s associate Zhdanov published a video on Telegram in which a judge appears baffled that Navalny is not appearing at the trial. It was also confirmed in court that Navalny is no longer in the IK-6 penal camp in the Vladimir region. But there was also no indication of his new whereabouts.

Kremlin: Knowledge of nothing
Navalny has long complained about the lack of medical care and about the intimidation and even torture in the prison camp. The last shots in the courtroom show an emaciated and visibly weakened man.

It is suspected that he has been transferred to a new prison camp, possibly further away from Moscow, to make contact with him more difficult. In Russia, these transfers often last for weeks without family members receiving information about the detainees’ whereabouts, human rights activists report.

But the penal system is silent. After criticism from the US, Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov again banned interference in Russia’s internal affairs. The Kremlin does not know where the prisoner is – and is not interested in it. Peskov said: “We have neither the intention nor the ability to monitor the fate of prisoners and the process of their stay in relevant institutions.”