At least six Russian political prisoners were reported to have been moved from jails and prison colonies in recent days, raising speculation of a possible imminent prisoner exchange.
Russia has sentenced dozens to lengthy terms of incarceration for opposing the Kremlin and Moscow’s military offensive against Ukraine, drawing scorn and demands for them to be freed by the West.
Prison transfers are notoriously murky in Russia, with family and lawyers provided no details and prisoners often losing contact with the outside world for weeks.
But they usually occur after a conviction and the disappearance of several high-profile political prisoners at once is extremely rare.
“Apparently, we are on the cusp of a very large-scale exchange,” Russian political analyst Tatiana Stanovaya said Tuesday on Telegram.
The Kremlin does not typically make statements on the progress of potential prisoner swaps, which are usually announced without warning.
“We do not comment on this topic,” spokesman Dmitry Peskov was quoted as saying by the Vedomosti newspaper.
Lawyers for jailed opposition politician Ilya Yashin said on Tuesday he had been moved from his penal colony in the western region of Smolensk, where he was serving eight and a half years for breaching Russia’s military censorship laws.
“Ilya Yashin was sent from the colony to an unknown destination,” said his Telegram channel, which is run by his lawyers and supporters.
Two aides of late opposition leader Alexei Navalny — Lilia Chanysheva and Ksenia Fadeyeva — also disappeared from their prison colonies in recent days.
They ran regional headquarters for Navalny and were sentenced on “extremism” charges.
Chanysheva’s husband said on X that she had been moved from her prison in Siberia on July 26.
In the case of Fadeyeva, prison officials in Novosibirsk “refused to answer her lawyer’s questions about where she was taken to, when, and what it was in connection with”, her allies wrote on Monday on Telegram.
Supporters for artist Alexandra Skochilenko, jailed for seven years for replacing supermarket price tags with messages opposing the Ukraine offensive, also said she had been moved from a jail in Saint Petersburg.
And rights campaigner Oleg Orlov, a key figure in the Nobel-winning Memorial group, was similarly moved from his detention centre, his lawyers said on Monday.
He was still contesting his conviction of two and a half years for “discrediting” the Russian army, Memorial said in a social media post.
The United States and Moscow have both said they are actively discussing an exchange for US journalist Evan Gershkovich — convicted in a fast-track trial earlier this month to 16 years for spying in a case rejected as a “sham” by his employer and the White House.
President Vladimir Putin has implied he wants to see the release of Vadim Krasikov, a Russian imprisoned in Germany for killing a former Chechen rebel commander in an assassination a German court said was ordered by Moscow.
A teenage joint Russian-German citizen, Kevin Lik, convicted of treason, was also moved from his prison colony, the independent SotaVision media outlet reported on Tuesday.
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