Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is alive and imprisoned in a desolate prison colony north of the Arctic Circle, his associates confirmed Monday, nearly three weeks after his disappearance. “We have found Alexei,” his spokeswoman, Kira Yarmysh, wrote on social media. “His lawyer saw him today. Alexei is doing well.” Navalny is being held in a colony in the Yamalo-Nenets region, with his chief of staff, Leonid Volkov, adding in a tweet that it was “almost impossible” to get to the area. “This is the highest possible level of isolation from the world,” Volkov added. Navalny’s team said they lost contact with him on Dec. 6, in the midst of a transfer from the prison near Moscow where he’d previously been held. Fears about his whereabouts and health flared as he failed to appear for two scheduled court hearings last week, with his team saying he had “never been hidden for so long,” according to CNN. Navalny is serving a 19-year sentence for what his supporters have called trumped-up charges of extremism.
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