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Russia sentences Kara-Murza, Putin critic and Post contributor, to 25 years

A Russian court sentenced Vladimir Kara-Murza, a longtime opposition politician, to 25 years in prison on April 17 on charges of treason for criticizing Russia. (Video: Reuters)
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RIGA, Latvia — A Russian court sentenced Vladimir Kara-Murza, a longtime opposition politician and Washington Post Opinions contributor, to 25 years in prison Monday on charges of treason for criticizing Russia’s war against Ukraine.

Amid a draconian crackdown on dissent, it was the harshest penalty yet for an opponent of the war, in a case that Kara-Murza condemned as “unfounded, illegal and politically motivated.”

The closed trial further highlighted Russia’s isolationist path, as President Vladimir Putin has disregarded Western criticisms of Russia’s human rights abuses and moved to brutally destroy any remnants of his country’s pro-democracy opposition.

The sentence was strongly condemned by Western governments, international human rights organizations and Russian activists and rights groups.

The State Department has described the charges as false and has sanctioned Russian officials involved in the case for “gross violation of human rights.”

Kara-Murza, who has been an outspoken critic of Putin, defiantly denounced the charges against him at a hearing last week in which he was allowed to make a final statement in the case.

“I’m in jail for my political views. For speaking out against the war in Ukraine. For many years of struggle against Putin’s dictatorship,” he said. “Not only do I not repent of any of this, I am proud of it.” He declined to request an acquittal.

In Russia’s highly politicized legal system, the court’s verdict was never in doubt. The prosecutor had sought the maximum term of 25 years for Kara-Murza.

One of Kara-Murza’s lawyers, Maria Eismont, said he expressed pride after the verdict in his work as an opposition politician. “My self-esteem has even risen. I realized that I have done everything right as a citizen and as a politician,” Eismont quoted him as saying.

In an interview with The Post, Kara-Murza’s wife, Evgenia Kara-Murza, said her husband has repeatedly shown that he will not stop fighting or betray his country and his ideals.

“And this sentence shows that they’re so afraid of him and they hate him so much for his consistency, for his courage, for his amazing bravery … that they want to lock him up for a quarter of a century,” she said. Kara-Murza’s wife and the couple’s three children live in the United States.

Asked by The Post whether the 25-year treason sentence for speeches criticizing the war was fair and reasonable, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, “You know very well we never comment on court decisions, and we will not do so this time, either.”

Vladimir Kara-Murza condemns Russian treason case

Kara-Murza was arrested a year ago on charges of spreading false information in a speech he made in the United States to Arizona lawmakers condemning Russian military actions in Ukraine.

In the summer, he was charged with cooperating with a nongovernmental organization, the Free Russia Foundation, designated as undesirable by Kremlin authorities. In October, authorities added treason charges related to antiwar speeches that Kara-Murza delivered abroad.

Russian media reported that journalists, supporters and diplomats who tried to attend the announcement of the verdict on Monday were denied access to the courtroom and sent to a room on a separate floor where the decision was broadcast, a decision that left Kara-Murza isolated, cut off from many who came to show their support.

Kara-Murza’s mother, Elena Gordon, told reporters at the court that she has been allowed to visit him only once since his arrest. She condemned the court’s verdict.

“I felt like I fell asleep there and woke up in a Kafka novel or an Ionesco play. Who are all these people? The world is upside down. We are in the 23rd year of the 21st century. What’s going on?” she said. Kara-Murza’s father, also named Vladimir, was a journalist and television host. He died in 2009.

Another of his lawyers, Vadim Prokhorov, told The Post that Kara-Murza’s health has been deteriorating so much that his long sentence amounts to “some kind of death penalty.” Kara-Murza’s lawyers plan to appeal.

International condemnation of the verdict was widespread.

U.S. Ambassador to Russia Lynne Tracy called for Kara-Murza’s immediate release, describing the sentence as “another terrible sign of the repression that has taken hold in Russia.”

Latvian Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkevics banned 10 Russian officials “involved in this bogus case” from entering the country and called on the European Union to impose sanctions on them as well.

The case is the latest in a series of increasingly harsh sentences for Russian opposition politicians and activists. Alexei Navalny, Russia’s leading opposition figure, has been suffering acute stomach pain in prison, and his lawyers and associates have warned that Russian authorities may be slowly poisoning him.

Navalny and Kara-Murza each survived poisoning attacks. The State Department has accused Russian officials of attempting to assassinate Navalny in 2020 using a banned chemical weapon. Investigative group Bellingcat reported in 2021 that Kara-Murza was tailed by the same special unit of Federal Security Service, or FSB, that followed Navalny.

Russia sentences dad to jail after daughter’s antiwar art, but he flees

Kara-Murza, who was the victim of poisoning attacks in Russia in 2015 and 2017, has lost 48 pounds since he was arrested near his home in April 2022 and imprisoned in pretrial detention. His health has declined sharply, according to his lawyers, raising fears about whether he would survive a lengthy jail term.

Navalny, speaking Monday at a hearing on a lawsuit against Russia’s prison authorities, expressed outrage over Kara-Murza’s sentence, calling it “revenge for the fact that he did not die, having survived two poisonings that were committed — obviously, and this has already been proved — by members of the Russian Federal Security Service.”

“I consider this sentence as illegal, unconscionable and simply fascist,” Navalny said.

Ivan Pavlov, a top Russian human rights lawyer known for defending Russians in cases of treason and espionage, said Kara-Murza’s sentence for expressing his views about the war exceeds the term normally given to murderers. Pavlov fled Russia in 2021 after facing a criminal investigation himself.

“In fact, all Vladimir Kara-Murza did was exercise his constitutional right to express his opinions freely,” Pavlov said. “This right should not be subject to prosecution. But it turns out that, with this verdict, the court simply overturned Article 29 of the Constitution.” He referred to the section in Russia’s constitution guaranteeing the right to free speech and thought.

Kara-Murza is suffering from spreading numbness in his feet and his left hand, a condition prison doctors have diagnosed as polyneuropathy, caused by damage to peripheral nerves, according to his lawyers.

During his final statement to the court a week ago, Kara-Murza said the trial had turned the clock back to the 1930s, the height of Stalinist political repression.

Kara-Murza has long been a supporter of the Magnitsky Act, which allows for sanctions against Russian officials responsible for human rights abuses. The law, named after Russian tax auditor and whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky who died in prison in 2009 after exposing massive fraud by Russian officials, has been adopted by the United States, Britain and several other Western nations.

The judge in Kara-Murza’s case, Sergei Podoprigorov, is under sanctions by the United States and Britain for his role in the jailing of Magnitsky.

Sakharov Center forced to close as wartime Russia purges human rights groups

Even as he faced treason charges, Kara-Murza continued to speak out against the war, and wrote opinion columns for The Post critical of the path taken by the Putin regime.

“My case marks the first moment in post-Soviet Russia when public criticism of the authorities is officially clarified as ‘treason,’” he wrote in a column in October. “Adding significant insult to a very real injury was the accusation of ‘betraying’ the country I love — coming from the people who really are destroying its future, its reputation and its standing in the world.”

He added: “This day will come as inevitably as spring comes to replace even the most frosty winter. And then our society will open its eyes and be horrified by what terrible crimes were committed on its behalf.”

After the verdict, Kara-Murza’s supporters launched a nonprofit fund, the 30 October Foundation, that he founded to offer financial support to Russian political prisoners and their families.

According to a statement posted on his Twitter account, Kara-Murza said Russia now has “hundreds of political prisoners — more than in the waning years of the Soviet Union — whose only ‘crime’ is to have political or religious beliefs unwelcome under Vladimir Putin’s regime.”

One year of Russia’s war in Ukraine

Portraits of Ukraine: Every Ukrainian’s life has changed since Russia launched its full-scale invasion one year ago — in ways both big and small. They have learned to survive and support each other under extreme circumstances, in bomb shelters and hospitals, destroyed apartment complexes and ruined marketplaces. Scroll through portraits of Ukrainians reflecting on a year of loss, resilience and fear.

Battle of attrition: Over the past year, the war has morphed from a multi-front invasion that included Kyiv in the north to a conflict of attrition largely concentrated along an expanse of territory in the east and south. Follow the 600-mile front line between Ukrainian and Russian forces and take a look at where the fighting has been concentrated.

A year of living apart: Russia’s invasion, coupled with Ukraine’s martial law preventing fighting-age men from leaving the country, has forced agonizing decisions for millions of Ukrainian families about how to balance safety, duty and love, with once-intertwined lives having become unrecognizable. Here’s what a train station full of goodbyes looked like last year.

Deepening global divides: President Biden has trumpeted the reinvigorated Western alliance forged during the war as a “global coalition,” but a closer look suggests the world is far from united on issues raised by the Ukraine war. Evidence abounds that the effort to isolate Putin has failed and that sanctions haven’t stopped Russia, thanks to its oil and gas exports.

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