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"Where Alexei is now, and which colony he is being taken to, we
don't know," Leonid Volkov, Navalny's chief of staff, said in a
statement on the Telegram app.
Navalny, Russia's highest profile opposition leader over the
last decade, was jailed for two and a half years for parole
violations in February 2021 after returning from Germany, where
he had been recovering from an apparent nerve agent poisoning in
Russia that he accuses the Kremlin of ordering.
On March 24, Navalny was sentenced to a further nine years in
prison for fraud and contempt of court. The opposition leader
says the charges against him are fabricated and aimed at
thwarting his political ambitions.
The judge ordered that Navalny, who has lambasted Russia's
military campaign in Ukraine as "stupid", be transferred to a
maximum-security prison, where his rights to visits and
correspondence will be reduced.
Navalny had previously been serving his sentence at Correctional
Colony No. 2, a prison camp in Pokrov, 74 miles (119km) east of
Moscow.
Navalny's political network has been largely dismantled since
his jailing, having been banned as an "extremist" organisation.
Senior aides and organisers have either been jailed or forced
into exile.
Navalny said two weeks ago that he had been charged in a new
criminal case with creating an extremist organisation and
inciting hatred towards the authorities, offences that carry a
maximum jail term of 15 more years.
(Reporting by Reuters; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
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