After three weeks, Navalny is sent to an unknown location in a prison on the Arctic Circle

The captured Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalnyis situated a prison near the Ural Mountainsin the Arctic Circle, after almost three weeks in an unknown location, as reported today by his team of associates on the social network X.

“We found Alexei Navalny! He is in the IK-3 prison in the city of Jarp, Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District. The lawyer saw him today. Alexei is doing well,” wrote opposition spokesperson Kira Yarmish.

Opposition lawyers had not contacted their client since December 5 last year, alerting his co-religionists and Western chancelleries.

The town of Jarp, which has a population of about 6,000, is located almost 2,000 kilometers from Moscow or about 45 hours by train from the Russian capital.

According to one of his exile associates, Iván Zhdanov, the prison is called “Polar Wolf” and is considered one of the furthest prisons in the inhabited world from all over Russia.

Ten days ago, the Russian Penitentiary Services (FSIN) admitted that Navalny had been transferred from the prison where he was serving his sentence in the Vladimir region, but did not specify his new destination.

So much USA as the European Union (EU) or Amnesty International (AI) had expressed concern about the fate of Navalny, the Kremlin’s number one enemy. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Saturday expressed “deep concern” over the opacity over Navalni’s whereabouts and demanded “once again” his “immediate release” and that the Kremlin stop “suppressing voices of the independent parties in Russia.

On December 7, Navalny asked from prison to vote against Putin in the March 17, 2024 elections.