[TheGuardian] Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has said that one of his allies had been forcibly conscripted and sent to serve at a remote Arctic base, in a move his supporters said amounted to kidnapping.Ruslan Shaveddinov, a project manager at Navalny's anti-corruption foundation, went missing Monday after police broke into his Moscow flat and his phone's SIM card was disabled.
He resurfaced Tuesday at a secret air defence base on the remote Novaya Zemlya archipelago in the Arctic Ocean, Navalny said.
Separating the Barents and Kara seas, the Novaya Zemlya islands were used by the Soviet Union to conduct nuclear tests.
"He has been unlawfully deprived of freedom," said Navalny, president Vladimir Putin's top opponent, in a blog post, calling the 23-year-old a "political prisoner".
| More Boo Hoo Hoo over at the Guardian. I wish we could pack off people like this to Siachen. |