Russia sentenced Kremlin critic Vladimir Kara-Murza on Monday to 25 years in prison on charges of treason, its harshest penalty yet for an opponent of its war in Ukraine, and the latest example of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s sweeping crackdown on dissent.
Who is Vladimir Kara-Murza?
Kara-Murza, 41, is a longtime opposition politician, historian and activist who has written opinion pieces for The Post in recent years about life in Russia. He has been critical of Putin and the Russian leader’s decision to invade Ukraine. In January, Kara-Murza wrote that “Russians are living in a frightening, distorted reality,” one of a number of opinion articles written from his jail cell.
Kara-Murza has been detained in Moscow since his arrest in April 2022. His trial, he has said, effectively turned the clock back to the Stalinist political repression of the 1930s.
While Kara-Murza holds British and Russian passports, he opted not to embrace a full-time life in the West. He has been living in Russia, insisting that he could only advocate for the rights and freedoms of citizens if he was exposed to the same travails they face. He is one of few Kremlin critics still living on Russian soil amid growing threats to those who speak out against the government, The Post reported. Kara-Murza’s wife, Evgenia Kara-Murza, and their three children live in the United States.
Kara-Murza served as deputy leader of Russian opposition group People’s Freedom Party from 2015 to 2016. He was a longtime associate of Boris Nemtsov, the Russian opposition leader who was assassinated outside the Kremlin in 2015.
Kara-Murza was poisoned for the first time in 2015, according to his wife. She wrote about the near-fatal attack in an opinion piece for The Post last year, adding that he was poisoned a second time in 2017. Kara-Murza said both poisonings were orchestrated by the Kremlin. Russia denied involvement in the attacks, which left him in a coma on both occasions.
Why was Kara-Murza arrested?
Kara-Murza was arrested last April on charges of spreading false information. Authorities cited a speech he delivered to Arizona lawmakers condemning Russian military actions in Ukraine.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine, Putin has made it clear that criticism of his “special military operation” will not be tolerated. Russian war critics and dissenters have been punished with arrests, financial penalties and jail time.
Many journalists have fled the country, and media organizations have been forced to close since Putin signed a law against “fake” news following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The media clampdown in Russia has decimated a journalism community already ground to near extinction over years of oppression, The Post reported last year.
Monday’s sentencing of Kara-Murza was strongly condemned by Western governments, with the United States and Britain calling for his immediate release. The U.S. State Department has described the charges as false and has imposed sanctions on Russian officials involved in the case for “gross violation of human rights.”
What’s next after Kara-Murza’s sentencing?
In Russia’s highly politicized legal system, the court’s verdict was never in doubt. The prosecutor had sought the maximum prison term of 25 years, and Kara-Murza declined to request an acquittal.
Maria Eismont, one of Kara-Murza’s lawyers, said they plan to appeal the verdict, according to Reuters.
Since his arrest, those closest to Kara-Murza have expressed concern for his health. His lawyers say he has lost almost 50 pounds in the last year and that he may not be well enough to survive 25 years behind bars.
“They’re so afraid of him, and they hate him so much that they want to lock him up for a quarter of a century,” said his wife at a Washington Post Live event on Monday, before adding that a disease her husband developed after being poisoned — polyneuropathy — presents a major risk to his life.
“After a year of pretrial detention and some time that he spent in solitary confinement, those polyneuropathy symptoms not just returned but now seem to be spreading to his right side. Polyneuropathy can lead to paralysis, and the symptoms are spreading. So I do realize that he doesn’t have five years, let alone 25,” Evgenia Kara-Murza said.
What else to know about Kara-Murza’s education, writing and activism
Kara-Murza holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in history from Britain’s University of Cambridge. Members of the university’s history faculty expressed their “solidarity” with Kara-Murza in a statement Monday, as well as their “dismay at the cruel sentence of 25 years’ imprisonment meted out to him.”
Kara-Murza has said that his Cambridge education has served him well in his career as a journalist. In a letter written to Novaya Gazeta Europe, he noted how, as a student, he specialized in “the history of the dissident movement in the Soviet Union” and wrote his thesis about “the first (pre-revolution) State Duma.”
While at Cambridge, Kara-Murza began writing articles for Russian and British news outlets. In 2004, he moved to Washington, D.C., to become bureau chief for RTVi, or Russian Television International, a news site that caters to Russians living outside their country, according to the Library of Congress.
He has since had a long career in media, contributing to The Post and other outlets and hosting a weekly radio show on Echo of Moscow. He has directed three documentaries about political dissent in the Soviet Union and Russia, including a documentary about Nemtsov, the Kremlin critic and a longtime colleague. Kara-Murza is the author of the book, “Reform or Revolution: The Quest for Responsible Government in the First Russian State Duma.”
Kara-Murza has received several awards for his work and activism, including the Sakharov Prize for Journalism as an Act of Conscience and the Magnitsky Human Rights Award.
Robyn Dixon and Adam Taylor contributed to this report.