The intruder of the news gives each evening a spotlight on a personality who could have passed under the radars of the news.
After a trial behind closed doors in Moscow, Vladimir Kara-Mourza was found guilty on Monday April 17 of “high treason”, spreading “false information” about the Russian army and illegal work for an “undesirable” organization. “. Messages of outrage poured in from around the world. Especially since the 25 years in prison accumulated will have to be served in a penal colony with a strict regime, stricter than the one where he has been for a year. Vladimir Kara-Murza was one of the last major opposition leaders still at large when Russia invaded Ukraine last year on February 24. He was arrested two months later, in April.
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At 41, Vladimir Kara-Mourza is in a pure line of dissidents. His grandparents of Tatar origin were imprisoned in Stalin’s gulag. His two great-grandparents died there. And his father, who had the same first name Vladimir Alexeyevich, was also an opponent of Vladimir Putin. He died three years ago in 2019 (his son, Vladimir Vladimirovich, announced it on Twitter without specifying the reason). The father was also a TV and radio journalist, opponent of Brezhnev and supporter of Boris Yeltsin. Vladimir Vladimirovitch, the convict of the day, has dual Russian and British nationality. He is British through his mother. He was born in Moscow in 81, grew up partly in Great Britain. From the age of 16 in London (in 1997), he was a correspondent for the newspaper Novye Izvestia and for the radio “Echo of Moscow”. He is doing a master’s degree in history at Cambridge, but he also speaks perfectly the French he learned in Moscow, at school.
Committed very early to the defense of human rights
Filmmaker, then journalist, he became involved very early in the defense of human rights. He was a candidate for deputy to the State Duma for the People’s Freedom Party, he served as Deputy Party Leader. Alongside a man who would become his mentor, opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, shot dead a stone’s throw from the Kremlin in 2017. Above all, he was very active with the opposition abroad to get international sanctions adopted for violations of human rights in Russia by many countries including the European Union and the United States.
Incidentally, he has also established quite strong relationships with John McCain. So much so that in April 2018, Senator McCain, who had just been diagnosed with a brain tumor, wrote to him to ask if he would agree to carry his coffin at his funeral. Four months later at the Washington National Cathedral, Vladimir Kara-Mourza actually carries the coffin with 14 other people including Joe Biden and actor Warren Beatty. Politico had highlighted John McCain’s message to Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump that he considered too close to the Russian president.
Vladimir Kara-Mourza’s wife and three children, aged 11 to 16, live in safety in the United States, in Virginia. He has always wanted to return as much as possible to Russia to the Russian people. He knew he was threatened. He was even poisoned twice in 2015 and 2017 by means of an “unknown toxic substance” which plunged him into a coma. The independent investigation conducted by two media Bellingcat and The Insider identified the responsibility of the FSB. Time to get back on his feet, he went back to Russia. The French-language channel Radio Canada often followed him. It was during a demonstration against the arrest of Alexei Navalny.
Radio Canada: You are not afraid of being a known opponent, you know that you can be arrested at any time?
Vladimir Kara-Murza: We know the risks, there are millions of people in our country who want, in the words of Alexei Navalny, a normal European country.
“This award is recognition of Vladimir’s work”
For a year that he has been imprisoned, his wife, Evguenia has not seen him again but she has taken up the torch. She travels the world to collect all kinds of rewards for him. She moves heaven and earth, meets world leaders. And Monday noon, here is how she welcomed the sentence in front of a journalist from the washington post, newspaper where her husband still writes columns from his prison. “I have an immense chance to share the life of a man of whom I will never be ashamed, she says. Someone whom I admire and respect deeply. Who is the best possible example for our children. This award is recognition of Vladimir’s work.
“Vladimir Kara-Murza has proven that he will never back down. That he will never give up on his ideals. A Russia where human rights are respected. A country that is not a threat to its neighbours. A democratic Russia.”
Evguenia Kara-Murzaat the Washington Post
Vladimir Kara-Mourza’s lawyers have announced that they are appealing. But his supporters fear that his state of health will deteriorate, he suffers from several neurological pathologies following his poisonings.