Russian journalist and dissident Volodymyr Kara-Murza was transferred from the colony where he was serving his sentence to an unknown place, his wife Evgenia Kara-Murza reported, Kyiv Independent writes.

In April 2023, Kara-Murza was sentenced to 25 years in prison for condemning Russia’s total war in Ukraine.

“I just found out that after four months of solitary confinement, my husband “left” (as the official put it) from the high-security prison in Omsk in an unknown direction,” X Yevgenia Kara-Murza said.

Kara-Murza’s friend Oleksandr Podrabinek wrote on Facebook that three days ago he sent her a letter through the prison mail, but received a reply that the letter could not be delivered to the correctional colony in Omsk “because the recipient must have gone to another institution.”

In a similar case, the family and team of Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny lost contact with him for almost three weeks in December after he was transferred to another colony.

The disappearance raised concerns about his health amid Vladimir Putin’s intensifying crackdown on the opposition ahead of a 2024 presidential election.

“The situation of Oleksiy is a vivid example of how the system treats its political prisoners, trying to isolate and suppress them,” responded Ivan Zhdanov, head of the established Navalny Foundation for Combating Corruption.

Kara-Murza was arrested in Russia on April 11, 2022 and charged with “treason”, “spreading false information” about the Russian military and membership in an “undesirable” foreign organization.

Kara-Murza, who is also a British citizen, went on to compare his trial to the show trials of the 1930s during Stalin’s purges and said his only regret was that he had failed to convince people that the Russian president was a threat Vladimir Putin.

Kara-Murza was a close associate of opposition politician Boris Nemtsov, who was killed in 2015.

In 2015 and 2017, Kara-Murza said he was poisoned by Russian authorities in retaliation for his efforts to persuade Western countries to impose additional economic sanctions against Russia.