Vladimir Putin this week informally kicked off his presidential election campaign by inaugurating two nuclear submarines in Russia’s north ― while his biggest political foe, Alexei Navalny, vanished from the radar.
Navalny’s allies say they have been unable to contact the imprisoned opposition politician since Tuesday last week.
They say the prison where he was being held in Melekhovo, some 200 kilometers east of Moscow, initially attributed his disappearance to electricity problems, which they suspect was a stalling tactic while Navalny was being moved.
On Monday, those suspicions were confirmed when Navalny’s lawyer was reportedly told by prison staff that the opposition politician was no longer there.
Navalny’s supporters have been expecting such a development ever since a judge in August sentenced him to an additional 19 years in a “special regime” prison on extremism charges.
But they and some independent analysts say the move has been deliberately timed, coming shortly after Putin on Friday announced he would — surprise, surprise — run for a fifth term in March’s vote.
“This is 0 percent coincidence and 100 percent manual steering from the Kremlin,” Navalny’s close ally, Leonid Volkov, wrote on Telegram.
“Putin knows who his main opponent is at these ‘elections.’ And he wants to make sure Navalny’s voice is not heard,” Volkov added.
“This way they want to isolate Alexei so he can’t receive information and can’t influence events,” Navalny’s spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh told the Russian-language Breakfast Show radio broadcast based in Riga on Tuesday morning.
The EU’s top diplomat Josep Borrell on Tuesday described Navalny’s disappearance as “highly worrying.”
“Russia’s political leadership is responsible for his safety & health in prison for which they will be held to account,” he wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
Despite being isolated and under strict surveillance, Navalny has managed to get his message out with frequent posts on social media including, last week, a plan encouraging Russians to launch an informational campaign against Putin.
Navalny’s team said he could have been moved to any of an estimated 30 prisons across Russia.
“There’s nothing stopping them from hiding him for as long as they want,” Yarmysh said.
Responding to a question on Navalny, Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Tuesday said the Kremlin had “neither the intention nor the capacity” to track inmates’ locations.
Meanwhile, Putin on Monday made his first post-election announcement trip to northern Russia’s Severodvinsk, where he attended a flag-raising ceremony for two nuclear submarines for Russia’s Pacific Fleet.
“With such ships and such weapons, Russia will feel that it is safe,” he said.
