Russian opposition leader Navalny goes missing as Putin seeks re-election

In the Russian region of Vladimir, 100 kilometres east of Moscow, Alexei Navalny was scheduled to appear in court on Monday, if only via video link from the detention centre where he has been held since 2021. 

Judges were to hear seven cases against the opposition leader, who is serving an almost 30-year sentence after being found guilty of crimes including fraud, slander and extremism.  

When he failed to appear in court, the judges decided to push back the hearings “until Navalny’s whereabouts are ‘established’,” his press secretary, Kira Yarmysh, posted on social media platform X.

She said Navalny’s team contacted nearly 200 pre-trial detention centres in Russia hoping to track down the opposition leader, but without success. 

‘Enforced disappearance’

Navalny’s team last heard from him on December 5. Lawyers were refused access to see him in prison on December 6 with no explanation, Yarmysh said. 

But Navalny’s failure to appear even at a court hearing has ratcheted up international fears over his wellbeing.

“I am greatly concerned that the Russian authorities will not disclose Mr. Navalny’s whereabouts and wellbeing for such a prolonged period of time which amounts to enforced disappearance,” said Mariana Katzarova, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Russian Federation, in a December 18 statement.    

Navalny’s disappearance seems conveniently timed. Putin on December 8 announced his candidature for Russia’s presidential election on March 17, 2024, and is widely expected to win. 

Putin oversaw changes to the constitutional in 2021 that allow him to run for two more six-year terms, meaning he could stay in power until 2036. He is already the longest-serving Kremlin leader since Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, who died in 1953.

Navalny has risked his life by positioning himself as Putin’s most vocal critic in an increasingly repressive Russia. He survived being poisoned with novichok – a group of nerve agents developed by the Soviet Union – in 2020 and spent months recuperating in Germany.

Another Putin critic and leader of the Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, died in a private plane crash two months after launching an aborted march on Moscow.

While there are legitimate fears over Navalny’s safety, another likely reason for his disappearance may be more mundane. 

“It is very common for prisoners to disappear for several weeks while being transferred [between prisons],” said Oleg Kozlovsky, Russia specialist at Amnesty International. “The most likely hypothesis is that he has been transferred to a special colony somewhere far from where he was held until now.” 

A 2017 Amnesty International report explains that the size of Russia and the remote location of penal colonies “means that prisoners must be transported over great distances” during transfers, with journeys often taking a month or more.

Prisoners are typically moved between colonies on dedicated trains without being told where they are going, and “in conditions that often amount to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment”, the Amnesty report found.

Carriages are overcrowded and passengers can lack access to sleeping spaces and toilets for the duration of the journey. “Conditions are reportedly worse than in normal cells in pre-trial detention which are worse than in correctional colonies and below international standards,” the rights group wrote.

‘Special regime’

Navalny has been at risk of this type of long-distance transfer since his most recent sentencing on August 4, during which he was found guilty of “extremism”, adding 19 more years to his sentence.

His new sentence also specified a change in detention conditions, moving Navalny from the “strict regime” penal colony in Vladimir to a more secure “special regime” colony, reserved for the most dangerous prisoners.

Under special regime conditions, “there are harsher restrictions on how often you can have contact with [the] outside world, how many calls you are allowed to make and how many packages you can receive”, Kozlovsky said.

“He will also be in stricter isolation and, of course, much further away from Moscow, meaning it’s going to be even tougher for his lawyer and family to see him.”

It will also be much more difficult for Navalny to continue his vocal opposition to Putin. Even from a “strict regime” prison, Navalny was able to communicate with a global audience and mount an opposition to the Russian leader.

In a video released on Navaly’s website on December 7, he urged Russians to vote for any candidate “except Vladimir Putin”.

“The current crackdown on both leading dissidents and grassroots activists is so severe that it would seem logical that the authorities are seeking to restrict Alexei Navalny’s access to the outside world as much as possible,” said Morvan Lallouet, a specialist in contemporary Russia at the University of Kent and co-author of “Navalny: Putin’s Nemesis, Russia’s Future?”

“It is fairly amazing that he has been able to get so much out in today’s Russia,” agreed Stephen Hall, a Russian politics expert at the University of Bath.

“My bet would be that someone in the administration has decided this was a good moment to transfer Navalny and therefore he will be missing for around a month.”

Health concerns 

Navalny’s failure to appear at his court hearing has raised new concerns over his health. He has reportedly been kept in unsanitary conditions and repeatedly confined to isolation cells, which, his team says, has taken a toll on his health.

In a rare show of defiance, more than 200 Russian doctors signed an open letter in January calling on Putin to “stop abusing” Navalny in prison by “deliberately” harming his health.

In early December, Navalny’s team said he collapsed in the solitary cell in which he was being held and needed an IV to recover.

It is possible that his disappearance means that Russian authorities “are trying to hide a deterioration in Navalny’s health”, said Lallouet.

“[But] we are staying optimistic and hoping that he is just being transferred between penal colonies.”

This article was adapted from the original in French.