Russian authorities have confirmed that jailed Pussy Riot activist Nadezhda Tolokonnikova has been moved to a penal colony in Siberia.

Tolokonnikova, 24, is serving a two-year sentence in a penal colony for a protest against president Vladimir Putin staged by her punk band in Moscow's main cathedral.

Russian ombudsman Vladimir Lukin says she is being transferred from a penal colony in Mordovia to one in Siberia.

That is about 3,000 kilometres from Moscow, where her husband and young daughter live, much further away than her first prison.

"Tolokonnikova has arrived in the Krasnoyarsk region, where she will be serving a part of her term," the Interfax news agency quoted rights ombudsman Vladimir Lukin as saying.

"I have been told that, according to her wishes, she has been placed [in the penal colony's] medical ward."

He did not explain why Tolokonnikova had asked to be treated by doctors.

Mr Lukin's press service had earlier explained that Tolokonnikova had been sent to western Siberia because she is formally registered as living in the city of Norilsk, in the far north of the Krasnoyarsk region.

Her supporters have not seen her for three weeks, and this is the first official confirmation of her destination.

Last month prison authorities announced she would be moved after she held a hunger strike to protest against what she called slave labour conditions and alleged death threats at her jail.

Tolokonnikova and her band-mate Maria Alyokhina are both serving time for performing an anti-Putin "punk prayer" in Moscow's Christ the Saviour Cathedral in the run-up to presidential elections last year.

Tolokonnikova's two-year sentence is due to end in March.

A third Pussy Riot member, Yekaterina Samutsevich, had her sentence suspended after her lawyer argued she had been detained before she could take part in the protest.

ABC/AFP