Jailed former head of Navalny’s Tomsk headquarters disappears from penal colony

The imprisoned former head of late Russian opposition politician Alexey Navalny’s headquarters in the Siberian city of Tomsk is no longer in the penal colony where she was serving her nine-year prison sentence, a group set up to support her announced on Monday.

Upon arrival at the facility on Monday, Ksenia Fadeyeva’s lawyer was informed that she had “departed” the prison in the western Siberian city of Novosibirsk, but no further details on her whereabouts were given. An official request will be sent to the penal colony from Fadeyeva’s legal team demanding more information.

Fadeyeva was found guilty of involvement with an “extremist organisation” and was sentenced to nine years in prison in December. In June 2021, a Moscow court labelled Navalny’s organisation “extremist,” which made it illegal and exposed all its employees to prosecution. Russia’s Investigative Committee subsequently went after Navalny’s associates.

While initially open to the public, Fadeyeva’s trial was moved behind closed doors following the high-profile but ultimately failed poisoning attempt carried out against Alexey Navalny.

Another Russian political prisoner, Sasha Skochilenko, a St. Petersburg artist and musician sentenced to seven years in prison for spreading “false information” about the Russian military after she left anti-war messages on price labels in her local supermarket, also appears to have been transferred from her St. Petersburg cell without warning.

“Yesterday, Sasha was moved … to Moscow,” her support group said on Telegram on Monday.

It also emerged on Monday that the jailed former head of Navalny’s Ufa regional headquarters, Lilya Chanysheva, and the jailed head of human rights organisation Memorial, Oleg Orlov, had both disappeared from custody without explanation.