Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has started serving his sentence for violating parole at a penal colony east of Moscow, a public commission that monitors detainees’ rights said on Sunday. 

The ardent Kremlin critic, who is President Vladimir Putin’s biggest opponent, was given a two-and-a-half year sentence at a facility in Vladimir region, about 200 kilometres east of Moscow, AFP reported.

Also Read | Alexei Navalny to face $13,000 fine in defamation case

He was convicted of violating parole while in Germany as he recovered from a poisoning attack. 

Navalny’s allies were not aware of his whereabouts for several days with the Federal Prison Service only saying on Friday that he had been transferred from a Moscow detention centre to a penal colony. 

Moscow’s public commission confirmed in a statement that he was in a Federal Prison Service institution in the Vladimir region after reports in local media, based on unnamed sources, speculated Navalny’s location over the weekend. 

“We have 100% information that Navalny arrived in the Vladimir region to serve his sentence,” a member of the commission, Alexei Melnikov, told the Interfax news agency.

“At first, he will be in quarantine, then he will be transferred to his colony,” he added.

Reports in Russian news agencies suggested that the opposition figure’s final destination would be penal colony no. 2 in the town of Pokrov.

Also Read | Alexei Navalny supporters stage flash mobs, light phone flashlights on Valentine’s Day

State news agency RIA Novosti reported that the colony is “strict” regarding “disciplinary compliance”, and that Navalny will find it difficult to make calls, with cell phones banned and a payphone that often does not work.

Another state news agency, TASS, cited an unnamed source as saying that the Kremlin critic will have the option of working as a cook, librarian, mask sewer or machinist.

Navalny spent months recovering in Germany from the near fatal poisoning with the Soviet-era nerve agent Novichok that he claims was ordered by Putin — a claim the Kremlin has repeatedly denied.

The 44-year-old politician was arrested on his return to Moscow last month, sparking a wave of protests across the country and a brutal police crackdown.

Also Read | President Vladimir Putin slams West for using critic Alexei Navalny to ‘contain’ Russia

He was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in a penal colony for violating the terms of a 2014 suspended sentence for fraud charges that the European Court of Human Rights has deemed “arbitrary and manifestly unreasonable”.

Last week the Strasbourg-based court ordered Russia to release Navalny, saying his life was in danger in prison, but Moscow swiftly rejected the call.

The head of Russia’s prison service said Friday that Navalny would serve his sentence in “absolutely normal conditions” and “guaranteed” there was “no threat to his life”.

The crackdown on Navalny worsened Russian relations with the West that were already at their lowest point since the Cold War.

Leaders of Western countries have condemned Navalny’s detention and called for his immediate release, and the European Union has agreed to impose sanctions on four senior Russian officials over the crackdown.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken released a statement Saturday on the sixth anniversary of the murder of Kremlin critic Boris Nemtsov that said Russian opposition figures continue to be targeted for “assassination”.

In addition to the sentence he is set to serve, Navalny is the target of a probe for large-scale fraud, which is punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

The Kremlin critic has denounced the investigation as politically motivated.

His team called for protests to be suspended after 11,500 demonstrators were detained in late January and early February, but it has also said that rallies would resume in the coming months.