Jailed Russian opposition leader ‘doing well’, according to aides, nearly three weeks after going missing

The jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has been located in a remote prison colony above the Arctic Circle after going missing for nearly three weeks, his aides have said.

Navalny was tracked down to the IK-3 penal colony in Kharp in the Yamal-Nenets region, about 1,200 miles north-east of Moscow, his spokesperson Kira Yarmysh said on Monday. “We have found Alexei Navalny,” she wrote on Twitter/X.

Navalny, who has been sentenced to nearly three decades in jail after building a nationwide political opposition to Vladimir Putin, disappeared from a prison in the Vladimir region near Moscow on 6 December, raising fears among his supporters about his health. A UN official described it as a “forced disappearance”.