Jailed Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny has been declared missing by his lawyers and allies just days after Vladimir Putin announced he would run for a fifth presidential term next year.
Mr Navalny, 47, who is serving a 19-year-term on charges of extremism, was due to appear in court on Monday via videolink but did not show up, his spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh said.
His lawyers said they have not been able to contact him since last Tuesday and that his whereabouts are now unknown.
The Russian opposition figure has been behind bars since January 2021, when he returned from Germany having recovered from a nerve agent poisoning attempt that he blamed on the Kremlin.
I wish more Russians would have gone to bat for him. Russia needs regime change.
Russia has spent the last 500 years bouncing around between malevolent autocrats. Hell, Kruschev was one of the more “sane” heads of state for which he was rewarded by being forced into “retirement.”
The only way there will be a regime change is if the current regime is burned to the ground and then there’s no guarantee that what comes next will be better. I’m not even sure what will happen when Putin finally kicks the bucket which will likely open a massive power vacuum.
There’s a need for change but it would be naive to think that the path to it would be painless. It won’t.
I mean they burned the aristocracy to the ground and then ended up with Lenin then Stalin et al… I’m not super hopeful for them.
In b4 the red lemmings find this comment
My most tankie opinion: Gorbachev wasn’t really that bad by comparison.
Gorbachev was a realist who saw the start of the USSR crumbling and falling behind, and acted. He’s cursed for the reforms and presiding over the collapse, but rolling tanks into Eastern Europe circa 1989 wasnt going to have the same effect as Hungary in ‘56. The empire was dying, and he sought to protect what was most important - historic Russia and the Muscovy rule.
If there was a chance for a regime change there wouldn’t be elections
Russia needs a revolution!
People don’t want to end up in gulags, go figure. Intimidation works.
To a point.
Navalny was just as bad as Putin.
I don’t particularly care who Russians elect, but I would rather they have real elections.
I really want to believe a rag-tag team of supporters broke him out of prison, and are planning a massive election effort to get him in and Putin out. I know it’s fantasy, but don’t tread on my dreams.
While his treatment is appalling, Navalny isn’t that far from Putin on the spectrum and things wouldn’t be that different if the roles were reversed.
You’d be surprised how much changes from sole rotation of personnel.
Mind you, people wouldn’t be calling Putin a tyrant if he left after his second term. Yet he didn’t, that mofo rigged the system in his favour during that presidency, and… well, you know the rest.
Rotation is unimaginably more important than actual personas.
They should look under the window of his cell
If you want ice scraped off the pavement in russia, just write Навальный [Naval’nyy] on it.
Can confirm, surprisingly effective.
Icy roads is a huge issue that often gets ignored or insufficiently addressed in Russia.
May he rest in peace.
Ah so “missing” is a new term for gulag
I mean, the Kremlin tried to kill him with novochok a couple years ago. Maybe this time they just finished the job.
“missing”
haha oh wow
They find him and it’ll obviously be a suicide like Gary Webb’s. Two shots to his head Two weeks before he exposed the CIA for smuggling Cocaine into the country in court. So yeah, he was probably ordering it off the Darknet to make it happen.
