The imprisoned Russian opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, has reappeared in a prison near the Ural mountain range, in the Arctic Circle, after almost three weeks in unknown whereabouts as reported this Monday on the social network X by its team of collaborators.

“We have found Alexei Navalny! He is located in the IK-3 penitentiary in the town of Jarp, in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug. Today the lawyer saw him. Alexei is fine“, wrote Kira Yarmish, spokesperson for the opponent. The opponent’s lawyers did not contact his customer since last December 5, lor that he alerted his coreligionists and the Western chancelleries.

The town of Jarp, which has about 6,000 inhabitants, is located almost 2,000 kilometers from Moscow or about 45 hours by train from the Russian capital. Jarp is less than 50 kilometers from Salekhard, the administrative capital of this territory that has an area larger than that of France, but is populated by only half a million inhabitants.

According to one of his collaborators in exile, Iván Zhdanov, the prison is named after “Polar Wolf” and is considered one of the most distant prisons from civilization in all of Russia. This Monday marked the twentieth day since Navalni’s collaborators raised the alarm about the whereabouts of the opponent, who is serving almost 30 years in prison.

Ten days ago the Russian penitentiary services (FSIN) admitted that Navalny had been transferred from jail where He was serving a sentence in the Vladimir region, but his new destination was not specified. The FSIN explains that the opponent left the prison “by virtue of the ruling issued by the Moscow Urban Court on August 4”, which included a new sentence of 19 years for extremism.

Transferred after campaign against Putin

At the moment, it is unknown if Yamalo-Nenets will be the final destination of Navalni, who was transferred after announcing a campaign against re-election of Russian President Vladimir Putin, in power since 2000. The process of transferring to another prison, known as “etapirovanie”, can last for weeks, during which time the prisoner is usually held incommunicado.

Both the United States and the European Union (EU) or Amnesty International (AI) They expressed their concern about the fate of Navalni, the Kremlin’s number one enemy. The Secretary of State of the United States, Antony Blinken, was “deeply” concerned on Saturday about the opacity regarding Navalny’s whereabouts and has demanded “once again” his “immediate release” and for the Kremlin to stop “repressing independent voices in Russia”.

On December 7, Navalny asked from prison to vote against Putin in the elections of March 17, 2024. Navalny also announced the launch of a website (neputin.org) that asked Russians to support any candidate for the presidency, except for Putin. The day after its launch, the site was blocked.