Vladimir Kara-Murza, a dual Russian-British national jailed on treason charges for 25 years, has been moved from his prison in Siberia and is being sent elsewhere, Russia's prison service told Reuters.
The prison service, FSIN, said Kara-Murza was being transferred from the IK-6 penal colony in Omsk to another destination. It did not say where.
A number of Russian dissidents and people convicted for their opposition to Moscow's war in Ukraine have disappeared from Russian prisons in recent days, in what rights activists say is a possible sign that a prisoner swap with the West may be close.
Although Russia does move prisoners to other incarceration facilities without informing their relatives and lawyers, the number of prisoners who have been moved elsewhere in recent days - at least seven - and the similarity of their profiles, is highly unusual.
Among those whose relatives and supporters say they are no longer in the same prison, but have, according to prison authorities, "departed" to another facility are opposition politician Ilya Yashin, prominent human rights activist Oleg Orlov and Danila Krinari, a man convicted of secretly cooperating with foreign governments.
Others to have gone missing include German-Russian citizen Kevin Lik who was convicted of treason, opposition activists Liliya Chanysheva and Ksenia Fadeeva, and anti-war artist Sasha Skochilenko.
All of them are individuals that the Russian state has labeled, for different reasons, as dangerous extremists. In the West, they are seen by governments and activists as wrongly detained political prisoners.
"We all hope that these are good signs," Ivan Pavlov, a prominent human rights lawyer who fled Russia and is now based in Prague, told Reuters.
"We hope that they (the authorities) have probably taken them all out of their prisons to gather them together in one place in preparation for an exchange."
Pavlov, whom Russian authorities have designated "a foreign agent," said the prisoners were most likely to have been taken to Moscow's Lefortovo Prison.
President Vladimir Putin would then need to formally pardon them before they were put on a plane to a destination in Europe, which Pavlov said could be in Germany.
Under Russian law, the prison service does not comment on where prisoners are being moved to. Only the prisoners themselves can do so in writing once they have reached their destination or are able to.
Reuters contributed to this report.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.