Vocal Kremlin critic Vladimir Kara-Murza faces 25 years’ imprisonment on charges that include treason for critical comments he made concerning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
A Moscow prosecutor on Thursday requested the term of 25 years for the prominent opposition figure, who is accused of high treason, spreading “false” information about the Russian army and of being affiliated with an “undesirable organisation”.
He was arrested in April 2022, just hours after giving an interview to American television channel CNN, in which he said Russia was run by “a regime of murderers”.
Mr Kara-Murza also told : “I have absolutely no doubt that the Putin regime will end over this war in Ukraine – doesn’t mean it’s going to happen tomorrow.”
Last October, it was confirmed that the critic was being investigated for high treason in connection with three speeches he made, including one address to the Arizona House of Representatives when he said Vladimir Putin was bombing homes, hospitals and schools in Ukraine.
The high-profile trial is one of the most recent examples of the Kremlin’s crackdown on opposition voices since the February 2022 invasion.
In December, opposition politician Ilya Yashin was sentenced to eight and a half years in prison for spreading “false information” about the offensive.
Returning to ‘Stalinist times’
At the beginning of the trial, Vadim Prokhorov, the lawyer for Mr Kara-Murza, said: “We have returned to Stalinist times, to enormous Stalinist sentences,” referring to the former leader of the Soviet Union.
The 41-year-old has survived two near-fatal poisonings since 2015, and his lawyers say he suffers from the nerve condition polyneuropathy as a result.
Mr Kara-Murza’s other lawyer, Maria Eismont, was quoted by the SOTA online outlet telling reporters after the hearing that he had lost more than 17 kg since he was detained. Although he was too unwell to attend some of his hearings, he was present in court on Thursday, Ms Eismont confirmed to AFP.
The politician was a close aide of Boris Nemtsov, the opposition leader who was shot dead in Moscow in 2015. He holds both British and Russian citizenship after moving to the UK with his mother when he was 15, and he attended Cambridge University.
Mr Kara-Murza was a pallbearer at the funeral of John McCain, the American senator, in 2018, and he has family who live in the United States.