Jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny has been located in a prison colony in northern Russia after going missing for nearly three weeks, his spokeswoman said Monday.
“We have found Alexei Navalny. He is now in IK-3 in the settlement of Kharp in the Yamal-Nenets autonomous district,” Kira Yarmysh wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
She said Navalny’s lawyer visited him earlier in the day, adding that the anti-corruption crusader is “doing well.”
Navalny’s location and condition had been unknown since his lawyers last met with him on Dec. 5, sparking worries that his life may be in danger.
Navalny was transferred to the prison colony in Kharp as part of his new 19-year jail term for “extremism.”
He had previously been held at the IK-2 prison colony in central Russia’s Vladimir region, where he was serving a sentence on fraud charges.
His allies linked the timing of his disappearance to President Vladimir Putin’s Dec. 8 announcement to seek re-election in the 2024 presidential race.
Navalny has urged Russians to “vote for any other candidate” besides Putin in the March 15-17 election.
Navalny was jailed in 2021 after returning to Moscow from Germany, where he recovered from a nearly fatal poisoning attack with the Soviet-designed nerve agent Novichok. He claimes the poisoning was orchestrated by Putin, an assertion the Kremlin denies.
This story is developing.
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