This is a short entry to highlight a somewhat sinister situation. Alexei Navalny, the leading Russian opposition politician, has reportedly disappeared from the penal colony where Putin’s regime had imprisoned him on made-up charges.
www.washingtonpost.com/…
His lawyers cannot contact him, and the penal colony administrators claim that he is not on the list of prisoners. He had been supposed to speak (by Zoom) at yet another kangaroo trial on December 11, no show.
meduza.io/…
Update. In the recent weeks, Navalny formulated a strategy for the 2024 election (planned around the inevitable vote-rigging) — maximize the protest vote, bring up the “anybody but Putin” percentage as high as possible, depending on the region. Last time anybody I trust had contact with Alexey was SIX DAYS AGO.
I fear the worst for him. He already was in failing health and under extraordinary pressure. And, as a certain Soviet leader supposedly used to say, “You have a man, you have a problem. You have no man, you have no problem.”
Update 2. Putin’s spokesliar Peskov claimed the president’s administration had no knowledge of Navalny’s whereabouts: meduza.io/... One Telegram channel with lots of subscribers claims Navalny was brought to Moscow to stand yet another show trial: https://t.me/bazabazon/23659 — I cannot confirm this, but if true, at least he’s alive.