According to AP News Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Russian opposition activist, has been sentenced to six months in jail for violating protest laws. Kara-Murza was arrested in January for organizing an unsanctioned rally in support of jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny. The court ruled that Kara-Murza had repeatedly violated the law on public assemblies and had ignored warnings from the authorities. Kara-Murza’s supporters argue that the charges are politically motivated and that he is being punished for his activism. The verdict has been criticized by human rights organizations and Western governments who have called for Kara-Murza’s release. We spoke to the Director of Russian and East European Studies, Kristin Bidoshi, to gain her perspective on the arrest.
Can you provide some background information on who Vladimir Kara-Murza is and what he is known for?
Kara-Murza is a well-known Russian journalist, a political activist and now political prisoner. He is the former deputy leader of the People’s Freedom Party (2015-16), one of the first opposition parties founded in the final years of the Soviet Union that is considered a liberal-democratic political party. He is also an outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin and a film maker. The two documentaries he’s directed are about political dissent. They Chose Freedom is about the history of political dissent in the Soviet Union and Nemtsov documents the life and career of Boris Nemtsov, the Russian democratic opposition leader who was assassinated in 2015.
What are the reasons behind Vladimir Kara-Murza’s arrest and what charges have been brought against him?
Kara-Murza was arrested in April 2022 and charged with Putin’s newly enacted law (of March 2022) concerning those who “knowingly spread false information” about the military and its operations. He was speaking out against Russia’s war in Ukraine. Although the stated prison sentence is “for up to 15 years” for that crime, Kara-Murza was sentenced to 25 years, most likely
because he was also later charged with “high treason” for speeches criticizing Kremlin policies concerning the war. According to Newsweek, in an address to the court last week before his sentencing, Kara-Murza said: “I only blame myself for one thing, I failed to convince enough of my compatriots and politicians in democratic countries of the danger that the current Kremlin regime poses for Russia and for the world.” https://www.newsweek. com/putin-critic-kara-murza-jail-ukraine-war-1794756
How do events such as Kara-Murza’s arrest fit into the broader political and social context of contemporary Russia?
Unfortunately, Kara-Murza’s arrest is not surprising to those of us who study Russia. I’ll keep my answer focused on current events (but unfortunately, we don’t have to go too far into Russia’s past to see similar tactics, i.e. Soviet History).
What we are learning more and more each day is that Vladimir Putin’s Russia is not safe for those who speak out against the government. Alexei Navalny is an excellent example of this; he’s a Russian Opposition Leader, lawyer, anti-corruption activist who launched a presidential campaign in 2018. If you don’t know his story, I encourage you to watch the documentary Navalny (2022) on Amazon Prime or HBO. After having been poisoned while working on a story in Russia, then evacuated to a hospital in Germany, he decided to return to Russia, where he was immediately arrested on trumped up charges and put into permanent solitary confinement. Amnesty International has recognized him as a prisoner of conscience and he has been awarded the Sakharov Prize for his work on human rights in Russia. These types of arrests are happening all the time in Putin’s Russia.
What implications might Kara-Murza’s arrest have for Russia’s relations with other countries, especially in the context of the current global political climate?
Here I think about the War on Ukraine. Putin believes that he must uphold traditional (read Russian) values over “the decadence of individual rights”; he complains of Western aggression and he believes it is his duty to unite Eurasia. Putin shares this world view with the self-proclaimed philosopher and political scientist Aleksandr Dugin; Dugin’s ideas were instrumental in Putin’s justification of the annexation of Crimea. Dugin theorized the foundation of a “Euro-Asian Empire”, capable of fighting the US-led Western world. [For more reading on this, please see https://www. nytimes.com/2022/03/22/opinion/ russia-ukraine-putin-eurasianism.html ].
To mention just a few human rights violations in Russia, since March 2022 the follow comes to mind: Since March 2022 several international news agencies and media platforms have been banned; BBC News Russia, Voice of America, Deutsche Welle, Facebook and Twitter have all been blocked in Russia. That same month, other media outlets stopped reporting on the war due to Putin’s new law against those who “knowingly publish false information” about the military and its operations – the prison sentence is up to 15 years.
United Nations’ human rights experts have condemned Russia’s continued and heightened crackdown on civil society groups, human rights defenders and media outlets (July 2022). Many defenders of human rights who participated in peaceful protests against the invasion of Ukraine have been imprisoned.
What steps, if any, can be taken to protect the rights of journalists and political dissidents in Russia, and how can the international community support these efforts?
This is a very difficult question to answer. As I see it, Russia has retreated to her old ways – she is suppressing the rights of her citizens, especially those who are speaking out against the state. I believe that it is important that the international community doesn’t look the other way, that we continue to document and discuss these horrific crimes in our media outlets and that we do everything we can to make sure that they are kept in the spotlight whether that involves working with Amnesty International for those of us with friends and colleagues in Russia, offering any kind of direct support we can, even if only on an individual basis. It is also vital that we continue to practice people to people diplomacy; Union College will continue to apply for a Fulbright Teaching Associate from Russia for our Russian Language Program because we believe that it is more important than ever that we hear firsthand from our Russian colleagues and friends about what is happening in Russia.
To that end, let’s not forget about American Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal reporter who was arrested in March on charges of spying; he appeared in court today (4/18) in Moscow on these trumped up charges – the first such charges since the Cold War.
