Aleksandr Fedulov, a lawyer of imprisoned Russian opposition politician Aleksei Navalny, has fled Russia after three other lawyers who defended the Kremlin critic were arrested last week.
Fedulov wrote on Instagram late on October 16 that he left the country because "the arrests of our colleagues who defended Navalny have brought significant changes to the work of the lawyers who remain out of jail."
Fedulov's Instagram statement came hours after Navalny's team wrote on Telegram that the lawyer did not show up at a hearing in Navalny's penal colony as scheduled and that his telephone appeared to have been switched off.
Navalny said during the hearing on October 16 that he was told that another of his lawyers, Olga Mikhailova, also fled Russia recently.
As the hearing into Navalny's complaints about his rights being abused inside the penal colony resumed on October 17, the anticorruption crusader said the Investigative Committee had recommended he find new lawyers.
"What sort of action can I carry out when I even do not understand what is going on with my lawyers. Nobody is allowed to visit me, I am isolated and cut off from any information," Navalny said, adding that he is "very grateful for my lawyers."
"Secondly, I am very much concerned for their families and, of course, I would like to tell my lawyers and their families that they must hold on, they are amazing," Navalny added.
Last week, Navalny's current lawyer Vadim Kobzev and his former lawyers Igor Sergunin and Aleksei Lipster were detained and later sent to pretrial detention for at least two months on a charge of taking part in the activities of an extremist group.
After the arrests, Russian lawyers groups and associations issued an online petition calling for all lawyers in Russia to hold "a warning strike" from October 25-27 to protest the "systemic persecution" of dozens of their colleagues across the country.
Navalny's groups and organization were labeled as extremist and banned in Russia in 2021.The punishment for taking part in an extremist group's activities while using the powers of an official position is up to 12 years in prison.
In August, judges at the Moscow City Court found Navalny guilty of creating an extremist organization and more than doubled his term to 19 years, ruling that one of Russian President Vladimir Putin's sharpest critics must be transferred to a harsher "special regime" facility, rather than the maximum-security prison where he currently is held.
The charges against Navalny are widely seen as retribution for his efforts to expose what he describes as the pervasive lawlessness, corruption, and repression by Putin and his political system.
Navalny's previous sentence was handed down in 2021 after he arrived in Moscow from Germany, where he had been recovering from a poisoning attack he blamed on the Kremlin. Before the most recent conviction, he was serving a combined 11 1/2 years for embezzlement and violating the terms of his parole while he was in Germany being treated for the poisoning.