Allies of jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny on Monday offered a reward for information about his whereabouts after he went missing in Russia’s prison system nearly three weeks ago.
Navalny’s location and condition have been unknown since his lawyers last met with him on Dec. 5. The 47-year-old anti-corruption activist’s allies have raised alarm that his life may be in danger, saying he suffered a "serious health-related incident" shortly before he disappeared.
“We’re offering a reward (in cryptocurrency) for any complete and accurate information about Alexei,” the Team Navalny account said on X, formerly Twitter.
Navalny’s allies linked the timing of his disappearance to President Vladimir Putin’s Dec. 8 announcement to seek re-election in the 2024 presidential race. Navalny has urged Russians to “vote for any other candidate” besides Putin in the upcoming elections.
Navalny was serving a new 19-year jail term for “extremism” when his team said he was moved from a prison in central Russia’s Vladimir region — where he was already serving a sentence on fraud charges — to an unknown location.
He was expected to be transferred to a “special-regime” prison colony to serve his latest sentence.
Navalny was jailed in 2021 after returning to Moscow from Germany, where he had been recovering from a nearly fatal poisoning attack with Novichok, a Soviet-designed nerve agent.
