Russian prisoner writes letters

• Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was a war crime.
• Many demonstrators were arrested.
• Vladimir was a vocal opponent of President Putin.

Vladimir Kara-wife Murza’s Evgenia knew the risk but didn’t stop him from returning to Moscow this year.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was a war crime. Many demonstrators were arrested. Vladimir was a vocal opponent of President Putin and critic of his military’s misdeeds.

The opposition activist insisted on visiting Russia.

He’s been jailed and accused with treason since April, and Evgenia can’t speak to him.

Vladimir, who has twice been poisoned, says he has no regrets because “the price of quiet is unbearable”

Before the invasion, opposing President Putin was risky, but now it’s even more so. Nearly all detractors have been detained or fled. Vladimir is treated harshly.

His lawyer estimates he could spend 24 years in prison for speaking out against the war and Putin.

“We all know the dangers of Russian resistance. Vladimir writes in a letter from prison, “Silence is complicity.”

He couldn’t stay overseas. “I didn’t think I could call others to action if I was secure elsewhere.”

Evgenia learned about her husband’s detention from his lawyer, who tracked the activist’s phone as he normally did when he was in town. The phone stopped at a Moscow police station on April 11.

Vladimir was able to call his wife and children in the US. “Don’t worry!” was just in time.

Evgenia laughs at the instruction.

The couple grew up in post-Soviet Russia during perestroika. Vladimir studied history at Cambridge and became Boris Nemtsov’s adviser.

This is the longest the couple has been away since their Valentine’s Day 2004 wedding. The activist says not seeing his family is the toughest. “I think about them every minute of every day”

Evgenia said, “I love and detest this man for his integrity.”

“He had to be among those incarcerated for opposing the war,” she remarked. I appreciate and admire him for showing that evil shouldn’t be feared. I’d kill him!”

Vladimir was arrested for defying a police officer, but heavier accusations followed.

The activist was accused of “spreading false information” on Russia’s military and “leadership.”

OVD-Info has registered more than 100 prosecutions under the so-called “fake news” statute since the war began. A local councilor, Alexei Gorinov, was sentenced to seven years in July, and activist Ilya Yashin will go on trial soon after referring to the massacre of civilians in Bucha.

Vladimir’s case is based on a speech in Arizona where he alleged Russia was conducting war crimes in Ukraine using cluster bombs in residential areas and “targeting maternity hospitals and schools.”

According to the charge sheet I’ve seen, Russian investigators judge his claims untrue because the defense ministry “does not sanction the use of banned methods… of conducting war” and believes Ukraine’s civilian population “is not a target.”

Reality is neglected.

At a rally for political prisoners, the activist allegedly mentioned Russia’s “repressive practices.”

He was charged with treason last month.

“The Kremlin tries to depict Putin’s opponents as traitors,” the activist wrote. Real traitors are those who undermine our country’s well-being, reputation, and future for personal power, not those who oppose it.

Persecution

The treason indictment is based on three statements overseas, including one in which Vladimir stated Russia punished political opponents.

Investigators said he was speaking for the US-based Free Russia Foundation, which is illegal in Russia, where “consultancy” or “help” to a foreign organization considered a security threat is now treason.

No secrets needed

“Treasonous speeches? It’s ridiculous. It’s free-speech persecution. Regarding. Not for an actual crime, Vladimir’s Moscow-based lawyer said.

The activist had no connection to the foundation, he maintains.

It’s political. They’re stigmatizing the civilized Russian opposition.

Vladimir notes that Alexander Solzhenitsyn was the last person accused of treason for political resistance in 1974. “I’m proud to be in such company.”

Evgenia has trouble staying calm.

She’s frightened for her hubby before. His poisoning in Moscow remains unknown.

Evgenia had a 5% chance of survival when he collapsed in 2015 and slid into a coma, but he beat the odds.

She nursed him back to health, even teaching him to hold a spoon. Despite becoming sick every half hour, he insisted on working on their couch.

“When he could walk, he left for Russia. This fight surpasses his concerns.

Evgenia has slept with her phone for seven years, “afraid he or someone else may call because he can’t communicate.’

She gave up trying to convince her husband not to go to Moscow, so she refused to help him pack. Before the war, Evgenia joined him to France.

“I wanted to make the trip wonderful,” she says, fighting back tears as she recalls long Parisian strolls. “Deep down, I knew.”

Evgenia has taken over her husband’s advocacy activities since his detention, speaking out about the war in Ukraine and political repression in Russia.

On Monday, she’ll launch Boris Nemtsov Place in London, the product of a long struggle by Vladimir. The opposition politician was shot near the Kremlin in 2015 in a contract killing.

The renamed roundabout is near the Russian trade delegation in Highgate.

“We wanted every car to see the Boris Nemtsov plaque,” Evgenia says. Her spouse thinks a new Russia would honor that name.

The lawmaker lobbied Western countries for years to penalize key Russian officials for human rights breaches. Their achievement angered a political elite that liked travelling and funding abroad.

Vladimir told me in Moscow that he and Nemtsov were targeted because of “Magnitsky” penalties.

Evgenia’s husband’s absence is taxing, but it keeps her going.

“I’m doing what I can to get him back to the kids, end this war, and bring this horrible regime to justice.”

Vladimir isn’t silent.

His handwritten prison letters argued that Russia isn’t headed to dictatorship and that its people aren’t brainwashed Putin fans.

He cites the many messages he receives from fans who openly criticize the Ukraine invasion and the Kremlin and who demonstrate publicly despite the risk. He asks the West not to marginalize Russians who “want for a different future.”

He warns that Vladimir Putin will not end the Ukraine war.

“Compromise is a sign of weakness for Putin,” he argues. “If he’s granted a face-saving withdrawal from the war, we’ll have another in two years.”

Vladimir says he copes with incarceration by exercising, praying, reading, and writing. As a historian, he’s reading about Soviet-era dissidents while awaiting trial.

“Their favorite toast was ‘To our forlorn cause!'” he writes. We now know it wasn’t hopeless.

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