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Alexej Navalny: current place of detention unknown
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FABIO FRUSTACI / EPA-EFE / Shutterstock
Supporters of the imprisoned Kremlin critic Alexej Navalny are again puzzling over his whereabouts in Russia.
The 44-year-old was brought from the remand prison in the Vladimir region to an unknown location around 100 kilometers east of Moscow, his team wrote on Twitter on Friday.
The opposition leader's lawyers had waited for hours in front of the detention center until they were told that their client was no longer there.
They don't know where he is now.
Since Navalny was arrested on his return to Russia in mid-January, there has been constant confusion about his whereabouts.
Most recently, around two weeks ago, there was no sign of life in the meantime - his supporters suspected at the time that the Kremlin opponent had been taken to a particularly feared prison camp.
A little later, however, he reappeared in the remand prison in the Vladimir region.
Once again, Nawalny's supporters on social networks expressed concern for the opposition leader and asked for information on his whereabouts.
Navalny supporters demand: Sanctions against Putin's environment - also against ex-Chancellor Schröder
In response to dealing with the opposition leader, his team has called for international sanctions to be expanded.
Personal sanctions would also have to be imposed on oligarchs and entrepreneurs close to Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin, said Navalny confidante Leonid Volkov of the Association of UN Correspondents in Geneva.
When asked whether he included ex-Chancellor Gerhard Schröder in this group, Volkov answered in the affirmative.
Schröder is not on the list of priorities.
Former Chancellor Schröder is chairman of the supervisory board of Russian oil giant Rosneft and chairman of the shareholders' committee of the controversial Baltic Sea pipeline Nord Stream 2, which is supposed to bring Russian natural gas to Europe.
The pipeline in itself is a good thing, Volkov said.
But Western trading partners would have to think twice about doing business with Putin's government.
The EU imposed sanctions on high-ranking Russian state officials for the poisoning and for the detention of the Kremlin critic.
Germany, the EU and the USA had demanded Nawalny's release.
Navalny, who was the victim of a poison attack in August, was sentenced to several years in a prison camp at the beginning of February in an internationally heavily criticized verdict.
The Russian judiciary has accused him of violating probation conditions in a previous criminal case while he was recovering from the attack in Germany.
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