Vladimir Kara-Murza, an outspoken Kremlin critic, has been jailed for 25 years by a Moscow court on Monday. The sentence is being considered to be the harshest sentence of its kind since Russia invaded Ukraine, after the court found him guilty of treason and other offences he denied.
Advertisement
Advertisement
According to media reports, 41 years Kara-Murza, a father of three and an opposition politician who holds Russian and British passports, spent years speaking out against President Vladimir Putin and lobbied Western governments to impose sanctions on Russia and individual Russians for purported human rights violations.
State prosecutors had accused him of treason and of discrediting the Russian military after he criticized what Moscow calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine. State prosecutors had requested the court to jail him for 25 years.
In a CNN interview broadcast hours before his arrest, Kara-Murza alleged that Russia was being run by a “regime of murderers.” He also used speeches in the United States and across Europe to accuse Moscow of bombing civilian targets in Ukraine, a charge it has rejected.
Meanwhile, in his final speech to the court last week, Kara-Murza compared his own trial to Josef Stalin’s show trials in the 1930s and had declined to ask the court to acquit him, saying he stood by and was proud of everything he had said. His trial was held behind closed doors.
Advertisement