Putin’s enemy, opposition leader Alexei Navalny found in remote prison after vanishing for 20 days

The jailed Russian opposition leader, 47, was found on Christmas Day local time in one of the toughest prisons in Russia in Siberia – known as “the Polar Wolf” colony, his spokeswoman said, according to The Sun.

Navalny, who suffered a serious health problem in jail before disappearing, was tracked down to the IK-3 penal colony in Kharp, about 1,900 kilometres north east of Moscow, Kira Yarmysh said.

“We have found Alexei Navalny,” she said.

“He is now in IK-3 in the settlement of Kharp in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District. His lawyer visited him today.

“Alexei is doing well.”

Navalny’s allies, who had been preparing for his expected transfer to a “special regime” colony – the harshest in Russia’s prison system – said he hadn’t been seen by his lawyers since December 6.

The district of Kharp, home to about 5,000 people, is located above the Arctic Circle.

It is “one of the most northern and remote colonies,” Ivan Zhdanov, who manages Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, said.

He described conditions as “harsh” – with very little contact to the outside world.

“From the very beginning, it was clear that authorities wanted to isolate Alexei, especially before the elections,” Zhdanov said.

Zhdanov said Navalny’s supporters sent 618 requests for information about the location of the political leader – who had previously been held at a hellish gulag 230 kilometres east of Moscow.

Navalny’s name mysteriously vanished from prison records six days after his disappearance.

Officials allegedly refused to reveal where he had been transferred amid fears he might have been shipped off to an even more brutal prison.

And there were fears he may have been executed.

According to his team, Navalny – the Kremlin’s top critic – wasn’t allowed to be seen by anyone after he fainted.

Lawyers were told they had to wait to see him until the time was right after repeatedly being denied entry to where he was being kept.

Navalny has been a vocal activist and a defiant critic of Putin’s regime – and has been described as the man the Russian president “fears most” by the Washington Post.

He was poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok in a 2020 attack allegedly ordered by the Kremlin and later jailed in trials slammed by Amnesty International.

His most recent sentence in 2022 replaced an earlier one, condemning him to serve around seven years in a more remote “strict regime penal colony”.

Previously, Navalny claimed Putin had been desperate to silence him after he and his team published a list of 200 oligarchs accused of being “directly responsible for the aggressive war launched against Ukraine”.

The list of 200 names was part of a wider “List of 6,000” Putin accomplices and Russian war enablers that angered the state leaders.

A video interview earlier this year with him revealed he suffered from mystery stomach aches and seizures – and had lost 18lbs in less than a month, sparking fears of a slow poisoning.

Most of his time in jail has reportedly been served in isolation.

This article originally appeared in The Sun and was reproduced here with permission.