Fierce Putin critic is handed a 25-year prison sentence
Human rights activists decry harsh verdict
The Moscow City Court on Monday sentenced Vladimir Kara-Murza, a prominent critic of President Vladimir Putin, to 25 years in a high-security penal colony after convicting him of treason over his criticism of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, an unusually harsh sentence that drew international condemnation.
Kara-Murza’s supporters said the length of the sentence evoked memories of Josef Stalin’s terror, and the verdict will send a chilling message to antiKremlin activists in Russia and beyond as the Kremlin continues to clamp down on dissent over the war in Ukraine.
Many Russian political activists have been prosecuted since the invasion, including Ilya Yashin, who was sentenced to 8½ years in prison last year on charges of “spreading false information” about Russia’s war in Ukraine, but Kara-Murza’s sentence was the longest yet. Ivan Pavlov, an acclaimed Russian human rights lawyer, called it “unprecedented,” saying that even murderers received shorter prison terms in Russia.
“It is a terrifying but also very high assessment of his work as a politician and a citizen,” said Maria Eismont, one of KaraMurza’s lawyers, outside the court, according to Sota, a Russian news outlet. She said the verdict would be appealed.
Kara-Murza’s mother, Yelena Gordon, told Sota after the hearing that she felt like “she woke up in a Kafka novel.”
“We live in 2023, in the 21st century, what is this, what is happening,” she told Sota.
An activist, historian, and journalist, Kara-Murza, 41, has for years been one of the most uncompromising voices against Putin and had long drawn the Kremlin’s ire, surviving what he characterized several years ago as two state-sponsored attempts to poison him.
Shortly after Putin ordered troops into Ukraine in February 2022, Kara-Murza, who contributes to the opinion section of the Washington Post, gave a number of speeches in the United States and Europe strongly condemning the invasion.
Although many supporters advised him not to come back to Russia, Kara-Murza continued to work in the country. He was detained there in April 2022 while on a trip to Moscow and accused of disobeying police orders. He was sentenced to administrative arrest, during which the authorities charged him with spreading “fake” information about the Russian army. He was later charged with taking part in an “undesirable organization” and treason. The verdict on Monday combined all of the charges into one sentence.
The trial, which humanrights organizations condemned, took place behind closed doors. Neither the prosecutors nor the investigators presented any evidence in public that would support the treason charge. Vadim Prokhorov, KaraMurza’s lawyer, said in October that the treason charge related to statements made in the United States and Europe that criticized the Kremlin.
On Monday, the United Nations human rights office decried Kara-Murza’s sentencing as “a blow to the rule of law” while Hugh Williamson, the Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch, called it “a travesty of justice.”