New Delhi: Imprisoned Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny has been removed from the penal colony where he was serving his sentence since the middle of last year and his current whereabouts are unknown, his allies said on Monday.
Navalny's spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh told his lawyer that the staff at the IK-6 facility in Melekhovo, 235 km east of Moscow, said that the opposition leader was no longer among its inmates, reported news agency Reuters.
"Where they have taken him, they refuse to say," she said on platform X.
According to Reuters, his aides were preparing for his expected transfer to a "special regime" colony, the harshest grade in Russia's prison system, after he was sentenced in August to an additional 19 years in prison on top of the 11-and-a-half years he was already serving.
He was found guilty of creating an extremist community, financing extremist activities, and numerous other crimes. He was already serving sentences of 11-and-a-half years in a maximum security facility on fraud and other charges he denies, according to CNN.
However, the process of moving prisoners by rail across Russia's vast territory can take weeks, with lawyers and family unable to obtain information about their location and well-being until they reach their destination. It was unclear if Navalny was already in transit to a new prison, reported Reuters.
The United States said it was deeply concerned with Navalny's disappearance.
White House national security spokesman John Kirby said, "He should be released immediately. He should never have been jailed in the first place."
Meanwhile, Navalny aide Leonid Volkov posted on X that the timing of his disappearance was "0% coincidence and 100% direct manual political control from the Kremlin."
"It is no secret to Putin who his main opponent is in these 'elections'. And he wants to make sure that Navalny’s voice is not heard," he added.
Navalny's disappearance comes at the start of the campaign period for a presidential election in which Vladimir Putin confirmed on Friday that he would stand for another six-year term.