Vladimir Kara-Murza is one of Russia’s most famous political prisoners. He is a longtime opposition leader and prominent guest columnist for The Washington Post who was poisoned twice in incidents that are widely attributed to the Kremlin. And yet, like another famous opposition leader currently imprisoned in Russia, Alexei Navalny, Vladimir Kara-Murza was determined to return to his homeland to continue his human rights work after recovering from attempts on his life. In April 2022, Russian authorities arrested him and charged him with “high treason.” He was eventually sentenced to 25 years in prison.
In late January, Vladimir’s wife, Evgenia, reported that he had been moved from his prison and that his whereabouts were unknown. Though he has now resurfaced at a new prison in Siberia, Vladimir is being held in the strictest form of isolation and his situation remains dire.
In Russia and other repressive countries, the situation is also dire for the lawyers trying to defend those political prisoners. The lawyers often face threats to their lives or threats of prosecution themselves simply for doing their jobs.
Joining the show to discuss Vladimir Kara-Murza’s case, and the broader risks facing political prisoners and lawyers in Russia, are Vladimir’s wife, Evgenia Kara-Murza, and his lawyer for more than 10 years, Vadim Prokhorov. Evgenia is Advocacy Director of the Free Russia Foundation and has tirelessly advocated for the rights of her husband and other political prisoners in Russia, and Vadim has represented a range of Kremlin critics who’ve been targeted by the regime, including opposition politicians and anti-corruption campaigners. He was forced to flee Russia last April, just days before Vladimir’s sentence was handed down, because the prosecutor and the judge in the case threatened to prosecute him, too.
Show Notes:
Vladimir Kara-Murza is one of Russia’s most famous political prisoners. He is a longtime opposition leader and prominent guest columnist for The Washington Post who was poisoned twice in incidents that are widely attributed to the Kremlin. And yet, like another famous opposition leader currently imprisoned in Russia, Alexei Navalny, Vladimir Kara-Murza was determined to return to his homeland to continue his human rights work after recovering from attempts on his life. In April 2022, Russian authorities arrested him and charged him with “high treason.” He was eventually sentenced to 25 years in prison.
In late January, Vladimir’s wife, Evgenia, reported that he had been moved from his prison and that his whereabouts were unknown. Though he has now resurfaced at a new prison in Siberia, Vladimir is being held in the strictest form of isolation and his situation remains dire.
In Russia and other repressive countries, the situation is also dire for the lawyers trying to defend those political prisoners. The lawyers often face threats to their lives or threats of prosecution themselves simply for doing their jobs.
Joining the show to discuss Vladimir Kara-Murza’s case, and the broader risks facing political prisoners and lawyers in Russia, are Vladimir’s wife, Evgenia Kara-Murza, and his lawyer for more than 10 years, Vadim Prokhorov. Evgenia is Advocacy Director of the Free Russia Foundation and has tirelessly advocated for the rights of her husband and other political prisoners in Russia, and Vadim has represented a range of Kremlin critics who’ve been targeted by the regime, including opposition politicians and anti-corruption campaigners. He was forced to flee Russia last April, just days before Vladimir’s sentence was handed down, because the prosecutor and the judge in the case threatened to prosecute him, too.
Show Notes:
Paras Shah: Hello and welcome to a special episode of the Just Security Podcast. I’m your host, Paras Shah, co-hosting this episode with me is Just Security’s Washington Senior Editor, Viola Gienger.
Vladimir Kara-Murza is one of Russia’s most famous political prisoners. He is a longtime opposition leader and prominent columnist for the Washington Post, who was poisoned twice in incidents that are widely attributed to the Kremlin. And yet, like another famous opposition leader currently imprisoned in Russia, Alexei Navalny, Vladimir Kara-Murza was determined to return to his homeland to continue his human rights work after recovering from attempts on his life. In April 2022, Russian authorities arrested him and charged him with “high treason.” He was eventually sentenced to 25 years in prison.
In late January, Vladimir’s wife Evgenia reported that he had been moved from his prison and that his whereabouts were unknown. Though he has now resurfaced at a new prison in Siberia, Vladimir is being held in the strictest form of isolation and his situation remains dire.
Viola Gienger: In Russia and other repressive countries, the situation is also dire for the lawyers trying to defend those political prisoners. The lawyers often face threats to their lives or threats of prosecution themselves simply for doing their jobs.
Joining the show to discuss Vladimir Kara-Murza’s case, and the broader risks facing political prisoners and lawyers in Russia, are Vladimir’s wife, Evgenia Kara-Murza, and his lawyer for more than 10 years, Vadim Prokhorov. Evgenia is Advocacy Director of the Free Russia Foundation and has tirelessly advocated for the rights of her husband and other political prisoners in Russia, and Vadim has represented a range of Kremlin critics who’ve been targeted by the regime, including opposition politicians and anti-corruption campaigners. He was forced to flee Russia last April, just days before Vladimir’s sentence was handed down, because the prosecutor and the judge in the case threatened to prosecute him, too.
Evgenia, Vadim, we are relieved to hear that Vladimir has been located. Can you update us on what is known about his current situation? Evgenia, let's start with you.
Evgenia Kara-Murza: Well, Vladimir disappeared for thankfully just 24 hours because he was moved without any indications of that being prepared. He was moved from one prison colony to yet another one within the Omsk region. He was moved from the strict regime prison colony to a so-called special regime prison colony, which is the harshest grade in the Russian penitentiary system. He is of course in solitary confinement there, as he's been since September 2023, when he was first transferred from Moscow to Omsk to serve his 25-year prison sentence for so-called high treason. Thankfully, Vladimir was able to send a note through the prison correspondence system to his lawyer, letting him know that he'd been transferred and letting her know that he was doing okay.
So, the lawyer went to visit him. So now we have established contact. And I don't know if this so-called special regime will somehow affect the visitation rights of his lawyer or the correspondence rights. We haven't yet understood that because this is something new to us. And I hope that we will have more information in the coming weeks.
Vadim Prokhorov: As some old school lawyer, I worked with a number of the Russian political prisoners. For example, for nine years, I worked with Boris Nemtsov, who has been assassinated just near the Kremlin nine years ago. And as a friend, and as a lawyer, I worked with Vladimir Kara-Murza for many years. For all of the political prisoners, for Ilya Yash and also my friend and my client and for Alexei Gorinov, Alexei Navalny, other Russian, prominent political prisoners, it is very important to have friendly lawyers — such kind of lawyers who are in in a strong connection with them, who think the same way, who could support them because when the political prisoner is pushed down to the jail, to the prison, to the strict regime colony in Siberia, for example, as Vladimir Kara-Murza, it's very important for him to have connection with friends, with the lawyers, and to have any real connections with the outside country and outside world.
And moreover, I think that it's a subject of life and death for them, because the connections with the political prisoners, and Putin's Russia, means their safety and security. So, I feel that this criminal case against Vladimir Kara-Murza and other political prisoners has nothing to do with law, at all. But to keep connections with him, to be in touch with you, for the lawyers, for the relatives, is a subject of life and death. And it's very, very important for all of us as
Paras: Vadim, these are difficult circumstances and difficult cases, but what else can be done to support human rights lawyers in Russia?
Vadim: It's already a difficult question, because it’s a quite difficult and dangerous situation about human rights lawyers in Russia. Last October, in October of ‘23, practically, most of the members Alexei Navalny’s lawyer’s team have been arrested in Russia and Moscow. Three of my brave colleagues, Alexei Lipster, Vadim Kobzev, and Igor Sergunin, has been arrested in Moscow on the absolutely false grounds that they allegedly took part in the extremist activity of their client.
Alexander Navalny, he's a politician, and his accusation in extremism has nothing to do with law. His lawyers are not extremists. They are just professionals who tried to help him judge by the legal tools, only legal tools. And it was the real reason for the Putin regime’s attacks on the lives of Navalny’s team. And I think that one of the most important consequences of this attack was to try to explain to the other lawyers, to make them fear, to try to make them scared, and to try to suppress them with the aim that they will refuse to make any legal assistance to the Russian political prisoners.
I am absolutely sure that these attempts, they will fail. But at the same time, I can only claim that my colleagues are quite still in Russia. They're absolutely heroic persons. They were, they bravely made their job. And I hope that in the future Russia, they will be remembered and their brave activity will be some kind of example to the other spheres of the civil society, how it is possible to make their job in the conditions of the totalitarian or authoritarian political regime.
Viola: Can you tell us a little bit about what impact has Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 had on the situation of political prisoners in Russia? And what do you see as the gravest threats facing those prisoners and their lawyers representing them today?
Evgenia: Well, this is a very good question and a very complex one. As Vladimir has always said, for years, I've been listening to my husband making those speeches talking to politicians, and he has always said that in Russia, internal repression always leads to external aggression. The aggression against Ukraine is not the first act of aggression committed by the Putin regime against our close neighbors. There was the invasion of Georgia in 2008. There was the bombing in Syria, there was the annexation of Crimea, of course, so this war unfortunately did not come as something unexpected to those of us who understand how the regime of Vladimir Putin works.
But in order to be able to continue warmongering, Vladimir Putin has to squash, has to annihilate all dissent within society and create this warped image of reality in which the Russian population in its entirety supports the war and stands behind him. In order to achieve that, of course, it has to up repression in the country, because of course, there are many people who don't want to do anything with this regime and want Russia to become a democracy in which human rights and freedoms would be respected, and in which we wouldn't be able to live peacefully, coexist peacefully with our neighbors without invading their territories and killing civilians there.
Just during the first year of the full-scale invasion in 2022, about 20,000 people were unlawfully detained across the country, including at least 565 minors, and criminal proceedings were initiated against at least nine of them before they reach the age of 18. For example, against a 16-year-old Nikita Uvarov, who was sent to prison for five years for planning to blow up a virtual FSB building in the computer game Minecraft.
Repression continues today, and every day we hear about new arrests and new detentions and new sentences. Just a couple of days ago, a 72-year-old woman was sent to prison for five years for making an online post about the war in Ukraine and the atrocities committed by the Russian army there. The number of political prisoners, according to Memorial, Russia's most respected NGO and the core recipient of the Nobel Prize, approaches 700 people, and Memorial itself says that this number is very conservative, and the real number is probably twice or three times as high.
The level of repression is becoming truly catastrophic, and the methods used by the current regime, the current Kremlin regime, completely replicate those used during the Soviet times against Soviet dissidents. And these methods include punitive psychiatry, torture, the use of physical and sexual violence, and absolutely Stalin-era prison terms that amount to 15, or 20, or 25 years, like in my husband's case, against acts of civil disobedience, and used against people who stand up to the Kremlin and say no to the war. That shows that there is, of course, a big part of the Russian society that rejects the policies of Vladimir Putin, and not to mention hundreds of thousands of Russian citizens who were forced to leave the country. And I know many of them are my colleagues. For example, from the Free Russia Foundation, a huge civil society organization that, just over the two last years, has expanded its network tremendously because so many people who were forced to leave the country still want to continue the work connected with independent journalism, with civil society rights, with defending democracy and promoting democracy. We're just basically saving the people running from Putin in the Kremlin, or from Lukashenko in Belarus, or saving and relegating anyone who's running from the regime.
Another such example is the recent story of Nadezhdin — lines of Russian citizens leaving their signatures for Nadezhdin, the only antiwar candidate in the so-called election that will be held in Russia in March of this year. This collective act is really important because it needs to be emphasized that those people are not just signing a paper, they're leaving their full name. They're leaving their address, they're leaving all their personal data on the on those lists. And they do this in a near-totalitarian country, in a near-totalitarian state, where they know that a person can go to prison for several years for standing in the street with a blank sheet of paper, like it happened so many times before. So, I believe that this act shows that there is a lot of dissent in the society. And whenever Russian citizens are allowed to show, to demonstrate it, without being hauled into police vehicles right away, they do this.
So that potential is there. And I believe that that part of Russian civil society very much needs the support of global democratic community. Because if we want to see Russia as a democracy one day, it is these people who are going to be building it. These people are the faces of the different Russia, that democratic Russia that we all want to see.
Viola: Thank you very much. It's really important.
Paras: Evgenia, I want to just pick up on that point that you mentioned. Recently, for the United States and the European Union, sanctions and other tools have become a key part of their foreign policy. How effective do you see those tools and what more can be done to support these types of civil society efforts?
Evgenia: Well, I see early warning signs of tiredness around the world when it comes to Ukraine, and how much more support can be given to Ukraine. And they're early warning signs, for example, in the United States in this regard. And I believe that it needs to be reiterated again and again, that Ukraine is not just fighting for its land, that Ukraine is not just fighting for its citizens’ homes, it's fighting for democracy to be able to prevail against the evil. And Ukraine needs all the support it can get not just to maintain the status quo, but to actually win the war. The victory of Ukraine is crucial for the downfall of the regime in the Kremlin. And I believe that just like the war in Afghanistan, that war is indeed weakening the regime, and the victory of Ukraine would weaken the regime in the Kremlin even more.
Another very important instrument that should be used, continued to be used, is sanctions. Sanctions can be more effective, of course, if loopholes were closed, if the regime in the Kremlin were prevented from avoiding those sanctions, from circumventing those sanctions. So, economic sanctions can be more effective, and I think that this is what needs to be done. They not just need to be imposed, but also followed through — targeted personal sanctions. The so-called Magnitsky sanctions are just as effective as well, because they send a very clear message that it's not the entire country that has to pay for the crimes committed by a handful of people. But these specific people need to be brought to justice for launching the act of aggression against Ukraine, and those specific people implicated in those gross human rights violations in Russia should be brought to justice. Their assets should be frozen, they should be made unwelcome in democratic countries. So, these personal targeted Magnitsky sanctions should be continued, should be used as well.
Another, of course, important thing is support to that part of Russian civil society that understands what's going on and tries to fight the regime with all it has. I’m talking about supporting independent journalism, supporting civil society activists, supporting lawyers, human rights defenders, because these people are fighting the regime against all odds. And they are going to be the ones to rebuild the country from scratch and make it a democracy. And with regard to political prisoners, and to hostages whose numbers are growing around the world, there is an initiative that is very close to my heart, and I believe that it should be supported by the global democratic community. And that is the creation of hostage affairs officers, or positions of hostage envoys following the example of the United States where there is such an office, and the Special Presidential Envoy for Hostages, Ambassador Roger Carstens, was able to free at least 30 people by now. And I believe that this is tremendously important because we're talking about human rights defenders who are defending the principles on which democratic countries are built. And they're defending these principles in those autocratic regimes, in those totalitarian countries, where people go to prison and are being killed for defending these principles.
And I believe that the response of many governments to the growing crisis of hostage taking and political imprisonment, the response that they're not going to engage with terrorists. The thing is, whether they engage or not, the number of political prisoners is growing and hostages are being taken. And I believe that such approach is unacceptable in the twenty-first century in a civilized world, and the more consistent, more responsible approach would be for these democracies to pull their efforts together and create a set of mechanisms that would not only allow these countries to solve the existing cases of hostages and political prisoners, but to create a set of tools to prevent such practices from being used in the first place. So, this is what I'm advocating for, wherever I go. And I know that there is interest for this initiative in many parliaments already, and there was a hearing held on this issue at the British Parliament. And now I'm in Berlin, and I've heard a lot of interest from German parliamentarians. And so, I hope that the same thing the same hearing can be replicated here in Bundestag. And I hope that other democratic countries will follow suit.
Viola: Thank you. Just a quick follow up on sanctions. When you speak to policymakers and to officials in the United States in Europe about increasing the number of sanctions on Russia, what do you hear about why that's not happening?
Evgenia: Because the war goes on for two years, and the sanctions already imposed were large enough, and we're not able to crumble Russia's economy, which means that Russia's economy is so stable that nothing can budge it, which I think is not true, and I believe that the Russian economy is being affected by those sanctions. This is why Russian statistical agencies stop publishing data pertaining to specific areas of economy, because they have things to hide. And of course, I'm not an economist, and there are brilliant Russian economist who explain how sanctions do work and what else can be done to make them more effective. Their input is really important in understanding what more can be done in terms of economic sanctions.
When it comes to targeted Magnitsky sanctions, they are being imposed, but then there is often no consistency. And we see sanctions lifted at the European level example, sanctions that had been imposed against people who have clear connections to the Kremlin. So, I think that more consistency is definitely needed. And also, more political will to name the specific human rights violators, the specific people who prop up Putin's regime, and to make it possible for him to continue warmongering, and that fear to name the specific names is still there. It's easier to say that Russia as a country is responsible. It's easier to say that the Russian people in its entirety, that all 140 something million, are responsible because when everyone's responsible, no one truly is. And I think that this approach needs to change.
Viola: Thank you very much. Is there anything else that we haven't touched on that you would like to make a particular point of today?
Vadim: Always remember, those people, those brave lawyers who are arrested, and to demand they release, always.
Evgenia: You know, I have been doing my best to continue Vladimir's work. And Vladimir has for years been speaking on behalf of political prisoners in the Russian Federation, advocating for their release, making sure that the names of these people are known around the world. And I have to do the same thing, and I have to talk about them because they are faces of that Russia that is very close to my heart, and I'm truly proud to have such compatriots as such as Sasha Skochilenko, an artist and a pacifist in St. Petersburg, who received seven years in prison for switching price tags at a local supermarket with antiwar messages. Or Alexei Gorinov, who spoke against the war in Ukraine saying that it was unethical to hold children's drawing contests while kids in Ukraine were dying on a daily basis. He talked about this during a council meeting, a municipal council meeting in Moscow and was arrested for it and thrown in jail for seven years.
It is two poets, Artyom Kamardin and Yegor Shtovba, who were sentenced to seven and five and a half years, respectively, for reading anti-war poetry at an anti-war mobilization event in Moscow. They have been missing for two weeks now. They are on their transfer from the pre-trial detention center to the place where they will be serving their atrocious sentences. And this is a very, very dangerous period in the life of a political prisoner in Russia, because under Russian law, the authorities are not required to provide information about a prisoner’s whereabouts to either his lawyers or his family members, and these transfers can last for months. So, anything can happen to these people while they are, like, forcefully disappeared in this way, and I believe it is extremely important to talk about these people, to raise the issue and to talk about the specific people who are missing right now. I know the fear that the families of Artyom Kamardin and Yegor Shtovba must be feeling right now because I lived through that fear in September, when Vladimir was missing for a few weeks during transfer. There are hundreds of people whose names I would be proud to call out and my heart is aching for them. And I believe that everything should be done to make sure that these people find the freedom and become part of that democratic Russia that all want to see.
Viola: Thank you. That's very, very profound and very important message. We really appreciate you being here.
Paras: Thank you so much for your work. And for joining the show. We're thinking of all the lawyers in Russia who are working on these difficult and important cases. Thank you again,
Vadim: Thank you.
Evgenia: Thank you.
Paras: This episode was co-hosted and produced by me, Paras Shah, and Viola Gienger with help from Clara Apt. Our theme song is “The Parade” by Hey Pluto.
Special thanks to Jasmine Cameron, Legal Advisor for Europe and Eurasia with the American Bar Association's Justice Defenders Program, and to our guests, Evgenia Kara-Murza, and Vadim Prokhorov. You can read all of Just Security’s coverage of Russia, and the rule of law, including Vadim’s analysis, on our website.
If you enjoyed this episode, please give us a five star rating on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen.