A Russian court on Monday, April 17, 2023, handed Vladimir Kara-Murza, 25 years in prison for treason and denigrating the Russian military. This is the hardest of all the sentences given to any opposition critique, since Russia invaded Ukraine.
The charges against Kara-Murza was taken from his recent speech he made to the Arizona House of Representatives, in the United States in which he denounced Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Investigators added the treason charges whiles he was in police custody.
Russia, in its bid to defeat Ukraine without getting any constructive criticisms, has adopted laws criminalizing “false information” about its military’s activities and conducts in the ongoing Ukraine invasion.
Authorities have regularly employed the wartime law to deal with criticisms that come against the government. The Putin administration has termed their activities in Ukraine as a “Special Military Operation,” and that anyonewho uses the word “war” or “invasion” against the activities in Ukraine shall face the rigors of the law.
Vladimir Kara-Murza is a 41year old father of three, and an opposition politician who holds both Russia and British passports. He is known in recent years for speaking against the administration of Russia’s President, Vladimir Putin.
Moreover, Kara-Murza has been lobbying western governments to impose sanctions against Russia, Vladimir Putin, and top government officials affiliated to Putin, for purported human rights violations.
The British government on Monday, April 17, 2023, summoned the Russian Ambassador to express its condemnation of what it described as the “politically motivated” conviction of Kara-Murza.
Kara-Murza Goes Hard On Putin
Hours before his arrest, Vladimir Kara-Murza granted an interview to a media agency, alleging that Russia is being governed by a “regime of murderers.”
He has also given speeches in the U.S and across Europe, accusing the Kremlin of bombing civilian targets in Ukraine, a charge the Kremlin has always rejected.
In his last speech during the court proceedings last week, Kara-Murza had compared his trial, which was held behind closed doors, to Josef Stalin’s show trial in the 1930s. He had declined to ask the court to acquit him, saying he stands by and is proud of everything he had said.
“Criminals are supposed to repent of what they have done. I, on the other hand, I’m in prison for my political views. I also know that the day will come when the darkness over our country will dissipate.”
Vladimir Kara-Murza
Currently in Russia, “discrediting” the army is punishable by law. Anybody found guilty of such offence could be handed five years in prison, whiles spreading what the Kremlin deems as deliberately false information about the army, could attract prison sentence of up to fifteen years.
The Kremlin has been very critical of the opposition parties in Russia in recent years, and has even hardened its laws against them, since the invasion of Ukraine.
Any politician or businessman, whose actions are in direct opposition to that of the Putin’s administration, shall either be eliminated or imprisoned.
The pro-government politicians in Russia believe that unity across society is vital and have described the critiques of Moscow’s activities in Ukraine as part of a pro-western fifth column, trying to undermine the Russian military campaign.
Kara-Murza has suffered attacks on his life twice. In 2015 and 2017, Kara-Murza suddenly fell ill, in what he believed to be poisonings, planned by the Kremlin. He fell in coma on both occasions.
Ivan Pechorin, Igor Nosov, Anatoly Gerashchenko, Nikolai Glushkov, Boris Berezovsky, and other oligarchs have died in a mysterious manner, which many people point fingers to the Kremlin for their demise.
