"We are deeply troubled by the news that the prominent critic of the Kremlin Alexey Navalny has been relocated from a jail, where he was serving his term after the court's politicized and illegal decision, to a high-security torture prison with a reputation for brutal inmate treatment," Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis was quoted as saying in the ministry's statement.
"We call for disclosing the information about the exact location of Alexey Navalny, the state of his health, and, most importantly, for releasing him as soon as possible," the minister added.
Up until now, Navalny has been serving his sentence in a prison some 100 km east of Moscow, but one of his lawyers, Olga Mihhailova, said on Tuesday that officers from the prison in the city of Pokrov told her he had been moved to a high-security prison.
Navalny was arrested in January 2021, and sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison upon his return from Germany, where he had been recovering from the poisoning. In March 2022, he was sentenced to nine more years in prison.
Russian officials have not disclosed the location of the new prison but the new prison is believed to have harsher conditions than the one in Pokrov.