By Deutsche Welle
Dec 23, 2023, 19:26 PM EST
The Secretary of State of the United States, Antony Blinken, expressed his concern on Saturday about the opacity regarding the whereabouts of Alexei Navalny and demanded that the Kremlin release the Russian opposition leader as soon as possible.
“We are deeply concerned about the whereabouts of Alexei Navalny, who has been missing in the Russian prison system for almost three weeks,” the head of US diplomacy said on social media.
In the same message, Blinken demanded “once again” the “immediate release” of the opponent and that the government of Russian President Vladimir Putin stop “suppressing independent voices in Russia.”
The Russian penitentiary services admitted on December 15 that Navalny was transferred from the Vladimir prison, where he had been serving his sentence since June 2022, but did not specify his new destination.
The lawyers of the opponent, sentenced to 30 years in prison, have said that they have not been able to see or contact him since December 5, and his collaborators launched the global campaign “Where is Navalny?”
On December 7, Navalny asked from prison to vote against Putin in the March 17, 2024 elections.
On December 15, Navalny’s spokeswoman, Kira Yarmysh, said that a representative of a Russian court informed them that the opponent is no longer imprisoned in the Vladimir region, about 250 kilometers from Moscow, without revealing where he was transferred.
Navalny’s team assures that the Kremlin is behind the situation of the Russian president’s main opponent, Vladimir Putin, who is seeking re-election in March 2024 after three consecutive terms. He previously served from 2000 to 2008.
Navalny, 47, was banned from running in the 2018 election over an old fraud allegation that his allies said was politically motivated.
He received a 19-year prison sentence in 2021 and was accused of “extremism” after surviving a poisoning attempt, for which he blamed Putin.