Ilya Yashin. Photo: EPA-EFE/MAXIM SHIPENKOV

The whereabouts of jailed Russian opposition politician Ilya Yashin is currently unknown, his official Telegram channel announced on Tuesday. According to the post, his lawyer Tatyana Solomina was informed of Yashin’s transfer from the penal colony where he has been serving his sentence to an unknown location.

The news comes a day after it emerged that four other Russian political prisoners, Lilia Chanysheva, Sasha Skochilenko, Ksenia Fadeyeva and Oleg Orlov, had been moved to unknown locations without prior notice.

Since being sentenced to an eight-and-a-half year prison term in late 2022 for speaking out about the mass murder of Ukrainian civilians in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha in March of the same year, Yashin has been repeatedly sent to a “punishment cell”, a separate facility inside a prison with far harsher conditions, which is often equated with solitary confinement. He had been serving his sentence at the IK-3 penal colony in western Russia’s Smolensk region.

One of Russia’s most high-profile opposition politicians, Yashin was recently awarded honorary citizenship of the city of Paris along with Memorial chair OIeg Orlov. In May, Yashin condemned the Russian authorities for sending him to a punishment cell three days before a scheduled prison visit by his parents was due to take place.