The sentencing of our opinions contributor, Vladimir Kara-Murza, to a quarter-century in prison on Monday by a Moscow court, raises three very loud alarms. The first is that his health is fragile and he might not survive 25 years in prison. The second is that Mr. Kara-Murza, who committed no crime, received one of the harshest sentences since Joseph Stalin’s time, a shocking, vengeful strike from President Vladimir Putin. And lastly, the time has come for the United States to step up on behalf of Mr. Kara-Murza — not only because he represents this country’s democratic values, but also because he and others like him are the best hope for a free, post-Putin Russia.
Mr. Kara-Murza should be designated by the United States as unlawfully or wrongfully detained, which will facilitate negotiating a prisoner exchange with Russia. Mr. Kara-Murza is a permanent resident of the United States, and his wife, Evgenia Kara-Murza, and three children, are U.S. citizens. He clearly meets the requirements for such a designation, which Ms. Kara-Murza has been seeking for months. She told us Mr. Kara-Murza would accept an exchange, and recalled that dissidents were sometimes swapped during the Cold War.
Mr. Kara-Murza returned to Moscow last year, knowing the risks he faced. He did nothing wrong. He has committed free speech, not treason. His arrest, conviction and sentencing were entirely contrived.
However, his deteriorating condition is real. He was the target of attempted poisoning in 2015 and 2017 by Russia’s secret services, using some kind of nerve agent, and now suffers from polyneuropathy, caused by damage to the peripheral nerves throughout the body. The numbness began on his left side and is spreading to his right, with loss of feeling in both feet and his left hand. According to one of his lawyers, Vadim Prokhorov, this malady should preclude being incarcerated in a Russian prison, but so far the wardens have turned a deaf ear to his appeals. “I do realize that he doesn’t have five years, let alone 25” in prison, Ms. Kara-Murza told us. “Now it is a question of life and death.”
“If we lose him, if we lose people like Vladimir, who is going to be there to rebuild the country from ruins, to make sure that Russia does not return to an authoritarian or totalitarian regime after the collapse of this one?” Ms. Kara-Murza said. “Vladimir kept on despite two poisoning attacks. Vladimir kept on despite the assassination of his friend,” Boris Nemtsov, the reformist former deputy prime minister, “and that did not scare him. He went back to continue his fight time and again, and I believe that he has shown he would not give up the fight for a free Russia. The free democratic community has a responsibility to stand with people like this.”
Ms. Kara-Murza said the sentence was “absolutely pure and cynical revenge” for her husband’s effort to win approval of the Magnitsky Act, a U.S. law, similarly adopted by other nations, that sanctions individuals who commit grave human rights violations. Bill Browder, the investor who is the architect of the Magnitsky sanctions, said Canada has added nine Russians to the sanctions list and the United States six over the Kara-Murza case, but there should be many more. “It absolutely helps,” said Ms. Kara-Murza, noting the asset freezes are a particular threat to Russian officials. “They prefer to steal in Russia, but hide that money in the West.”
Mr. Putin’s draconian laws against free speech since the invasion of Ukraine — punishing supposed infractions as minor as a child’s drawing — have cast a pall of fear. There are no large protests. “That society does not have freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of association, free and fair elections,” Ms. Kara-Murza said. “There is nothing. No rights are respected in Russia.” But, she added, the strong demand for virtual private networking software indicates a continued demand for independent information from outside. She suggested that in addition to sanctions, the United States and its allies should do everything possible to defend the remaining free channels of information, including support for independent journalists, both inside Russia and outside, and to help Ukraine push out the Russian invasion.
Ms. Kara-Murza recalled that her husband worked as a journalist but in 2012 discovered he had been barred from the Russian Embassy in Washington, a retaliatory move because of his public support of the Magnitsky Act. “He decided, well, I’ve got things to say and I will continue,” and plunged deeper into politics.
Hopefully, he will continue to have things to say — the unvarnished truth — and say it in freedom. There is much to do to rescue Russia’s freedom, too.
