Russian opposition leader Navalny moved to high-security penal colony

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is seen on screens via a video link from the IK-2 corrective penal colony in Pokrov during a court hearing to consider an appeal against his prison sentence in Moscow, Russia May 24, 2022. REUTERS/Evgenia Novozhenina

LONDON (Reuters) -Alexei Navalny, Russia's most prominent opposition leader, has been abruptly moved from the prison where he was serving an 11-1/2 year sentence to a high-security penal colony farther from Moscow.

Navalny earned admiration from the disparate opposition in 2021 for returning to Russia voluntarily in 2021 from Germany, where he had been treated for what Western laboratory tests showed was an attempt to poison him in Siberia with a Soviet-era nerve agent. Russia denies trying to kill him.