Kremlin critic missing amid prison transfer, allies say

By DASHA LITVINOVA
Associated Press

TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — Relatives and allies of an opposition politician imprisoned in Russia say they haven’t heard from him in a month and are worried about his well-being. Andrei Pivovarov was pulled off a Warsaw-bound flight at St. Petersburg’s airport just before takeoff in May 2021 after Moscow said his group Open Russia was a so-called undesirable organization. His whereabouts remain unknown, which Amnesty International says amounts to an enforced disappearance. Pivovarov’s partner says he wrote in mid-January that he would soon be sent from St. Petersburg to a penal colony in a nearby region. Russian prison transfers are notorious for taking a long time, sometimes weeks, during which there’s no access to prisoners.