Vladimir Putin’s main political opponent Alexei Navalny is missing after being removed by officials from a prison colony in Russia, his allies say.
The alarm was raised after the politician failed to show for a scheduled court appearance via videolink on Monday, with friends saying they had also not heard from him in six days.
The 47-year-old has been behind bars since January 2021 on what supporters say are politically-motivated charges.
Latest: Follow updates from the Russia-Ukraine war
Mr Navalny was transferred to the IK-6 jail in Melekhovo, east of Moscow, last year, but his spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh said staff there had now confirmed he had been removed from the facility.
She added on X, formerly Twitter: “Where they have taken him, they refuse to say.”
Ms Yarmysh said prison officials claimed he had not appeared via videolink as expected because of “electricity problems”.
It comes just days after Mr Putin announced he would stand for re-election next year – potentially keeping him in power until at least 2030.
Mr Navalny’s aide Leonid Volkov also posted on X that the timing was “0% coincidence and 100% direct manual political control from the Kremlin.”
He added: “It is no secret to Putin who his main opponent is in these ‘elections’. And he wants to make sure that Navalny’s voice is not heard.”
The politician has been one of the Russian president’s fiercest critics in recent years and helped organise large-scale anti-Kremlin protests.
But he was arrested in January 2021 after returning to Moscow from Germany, where he had been recuperating from being poisoned by a nerve agent.
Read more:
Who is the jailed Putin critic some Russians hope could overthrow him?
Russian president greeted with jets, horses, camels and flags at COP28
Mr Navalny lost an appeal in September against a 19-year prison term for alleged extremist activity which was handed down in August and came on top of an existing 11-and-a-half year sentence for fraud and other charges.
Following the latest sentencing his allies said they had been expecting him to be moved to a “special regime” prison colony, the harshest grade in Russia’s prison system, but had not been given any further information.