The sentencing of our opinions contributor, Vladimir Kara-Murza, to a quarter-century in prison on Monday by a Moscow court, raises three very loud alarms. The first is that his health is fragile and he might not survive 25 years in prison. The second is that Mr. Kara-Murza, who committed no crime, received one of the harshest sentences since Joseph Stalin’s time, a shocking, vengeful strike from President Vladimir Putin. And lastly, the time has come for the United States to step up on behalf of Mr. Kara-Murza — not only because he represents this country’s democratic values, but also because he and others like him are the best hope for a free, post-Putin Russia.
Opinion Why Vladimir Kara-Murza, and Russia, should live in freedom
By the Editorial Board
April 17, 2023 at 6:55 p.m. EDT
Mr. Kara-Murza should be designated by the United States as unlawfully or wrongfully detained, which will facilitate negotiating a prisoner exchange with Russia. Mr. Kara-Murza is a permanent resident of the United States, and his wife, Evgenia Kara-Murza, and three children, are U.S. citizens. He clearly meets the requirements for such a designation, which Ms. Kara-Murza has been seeking for months. She told us Mr. Kara-Murza would accept an exchange, and recalled that dissidents were sometimes swapped during the Cold War.
Mr. Kara-Murza returned to Moscow last year, knowing the risks he faced. He did nothing wrong. He has committed free speech, not treason. His arrest, conviction and sentencing were entirely contrived.
However, his deteriorating condition is real. He was the target of attempted poisoning in 2015 and 2017 by Russia’s secret services, using some kind of nerve agent, and now suffers from polyneuropathy, caused by damage to the peripheral nerves throughout the body. The numbness began on his left side and is spreading to his right, with loss of feeling in both feet and his left hand. According to one of his lawyers, Vadim Prokhorov, this malady should preclude being incarcerated in a Russian prison, but so far the wardens have turned a deaf ear to his appeals. “I do realize that he doesn’t have five years, let alone 25” in prison, Ms. Kara-Murza told us. “Now it is a question of life and death.”
Skip to end of carousel
End of carouselWho is Vladimir Kara-Murza?
Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Global Opinions contributor to The Post, is a Russian politician, author and historian. He holds Russian and British passports and settled his family in the United States. He has been an outspoken critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
What happened to him?
In April 2022, nearly two months after Putin invaded Ukraine, uniformed police officers surrounded Kara-Murza’s car and took him to a Moscow police station.
Why was he arrested?
Initially detained on a spurious charge of disobeying the police, Kara-Murza was indicted 11 days later under a law passed in the wake of the invasion. A Russian court charged him with spreading what it considers “false” information. He maintains his innocence.
What did the Russian court decide?
A Russian court sentenced Kara-Murza to 25 years in prison on charges of treason. A week before the sentencing, he denounced the charges, saying in part: “The day will come when the darkness over our country will dissipate.”
What did he say about the war in Ukraine?
In the month he was arrested, Kara-Murza called the government “a regime of murderers” in an interview. He had also accused Russia of war crimes in a speech to the Arizona House of Representatives. He was locked up for telling the truth, The Post’s Editorial Board wrote.
What has he written since his arrest?
Kara-Murza continues to write for The Post via letters from jail, writing “the only reason for my arrest was my political and, above all, antiwar position.” He said hundreds of people who protested the war in Ukraine were imprisoned. Still, he stayed resolute: “Russia will be free,” he wrote. “I’ve never been so sure of it as I am today.”
Is this the first time he has been targeted?
1/7
“If we lose him, if we lose people like Vladimir, who is going to be there to rebuild the country from ruins, to make sure that Russia does not return to an authoritarian or totalitarian regime after the collapse of this one?” Ms. Kara-Murza said. “Vladimir kept on despite two poisoning attacks. Vladimir kept on despite the assassination of his friend,” Boris Nemtsov, the reformist former deputy prime minister, “and that did not scare him. He went back to continue his fight time and again, and I believe that he has shown he would not give up the fight for a free Russia. The free democratic community has a responsibility to stand with people like this.”
Follow Editorial Board's opinions
Ms. Kara-Murza said the sentence was “absolutely pure and cynical revenge” for her husband’s effort to win approval of the Magnitsky Act, a U.S. law, similarly adopted by other nations, that sanctions individuals who commit grave human rights violations. Bill Browder, the investor who is the architect of the Magnitsky sanctions, said Canada has added nine Russians to the sanctions list and the United States six over the Kara-Murza case, but there should be many more. “It absolutely helps,” said Ms. Kara-Murza, noting the asset freezes are a particular threat to Russian officials. “They prefer to steal in Russia, but hide that money in the West.”
Skip to end of carousel
End of carousel- The Biden administration releases a review on the Colorado River.
- The misery of Belarus’s political prisoners should not be ignored.
- Biden has a new border plan.
- The United States should keep the pressure on Nicaragua.
- America’s fight against inflation isn’t over.
- The Taliban has doubled down on the repression of women.
The Biden administration released an environmental impact statement outlining options for cutting use of the Colorado River. Water allocations could prioritize farmers in California based on centuries-old water rights, or involve proportional cuts to Arizona, California and Nevada. The review also included the costs of the status quo.
The administration will likely decide on a course of action by August. As we outlined in an editorial in February, a voluntary agreement between the states is the best option — and a dramatic reimagining of water use is needed thereafter.
Ihar Losik, one of hundreds of young people unjustly jailed in Belarus for opposing Alexander Lukashenko’s dictatorship, attempted suicide but was saved and sent to a prison medical unit, according to the human rights group Viasna. Losik, 30, a blogger who led a popular Telegram channel, was arrested in 2020 and is serving a 15-year prison term on charges of “organizing riots” and “incitement to hatred.” His wife is also a political prisoner. Read more about their struggle — and those of other political prisoners — in a recent editorial.
The Department of Homeland Security has provided details of a plan to prevent a migrant surge along the southern border. The administration would presumptively deny asylum to migrants who failed to seek it in a third country en route — unless they face “an extreme and imminent threat” of rape, kidnapping, torture or murder. Critics allege that this is akin to an illegal Trump-era policy. In fact, President Biden is acting lawfully in response to what was fast becoming an unmanageable flow at the border. Read our most recent editorial on the U.S. asylum system.
Some 222 Nicaraguan political prisoners left that Central American country for the United States in February. President Daniel Ortega released and sent them into exile in a single motion. Nevertheless, it appears that Mr. Ortega let them go under pressure from economic sanctions the United States imposed on his regime when he launched a wave of repression in 2018. The Biden administration should keep the pressure on. Read recent editorials about the situation in Nicaragua.
Inflation remains stubbornly high at 6.4 percent in January. The Federal Reserve’s job is not done in this fight. More interest rate hikes are needed. Read a recent editorial about inflation and the Fed.
Afghanistan’s rulers had promised that barring women from universities was only temporary. But private universities got a letter on Jan. 28 warning them that women are prohibited from taking university entrance examinations. Afghanistan has 140 private universities across 24 provinces, with around 200,000 students. Out of those, some 60,000 to 70,000 are women, the AP reports. Read a recent editorial on women’s rights in Afghanistan.
1/7
Mr. Putin’s draconian laws against free speech since the invasion of Ukraine — punishing supposed infractions as minor as a child’s drawing — have cast a pall of fear. There are no large protests. “That society does not have freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of association, free and fair elections,” Ms. Kara-Murza said. “There is nothing. No rights are respected in Russia.” But, she added, the strong demand for virtual private networking software indicates a continued demand for independent information from outside. She suggested that in addition to sanctions, the United States and its allies should do everything possible to defend the remaining free channels of information, including support for independent journalists, both inside Russia and outside, and to help Ukraine push out the Russian invasion.
Ms. Kara-Murza recalled that her husband worked as a journalist but in 2012 discovered he had been barred from the Russian Embassy in Washington, a retaliatory move because of his public support of the Magnitsky Act. “He decided, well, I’ve got things to say and I will continue,” and plunged deeper into politics.
Hopefully, he will continue to have things to say — the unvarnished truth — and say it in freedom. There is much to do to rescue Russia’s freedom, too.