1. Vladimir Kara-Murza was elected to the Coordinating Council of the Russian Opposition in 2012, and served as deputy leader of the People's Freedom Party from 2015 to 2016.
48 Facts About Vladimir Kara-Murza
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Vladimir Kara-Murza has directed two documentaries, They Chose Freedom and Nemtsov.
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Vladimir Kara-Murza was awarded the Civil Courage Prize in 2018.
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Vladimir Kara-Murza's arrest was extended after prosecutors introduced new charges of "discrediting" the military, and in October 2022 he was charged with treason.
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On 1 August 2024, Vladimir Kara-Murza was released from prison as part of a prisoner exchange deal involving two dozen individuals from seven different countries.
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Vladimir Kara-Murza's father was a great grandson of Latvian revolutionary Voldemars Bisenieks, and great-grand-nephew of Latvia's first Ambassador to Great Britain, Georgs Bisenieks, both of whom were shot by the NKVD.
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Vladimir Kara-Murza is a member of the Kara-Murza family, who are descendants of a Tatar aristocrat who settled in Moscow and converted to Christianity in the 15th century AD.
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Vladimir Kara-Murza earned a BA and an MA degree in history at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, and he speaks fluent English.
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Vladimir Kara-Murza worked as London correspondent for a succession of Russian media outlets, including Novye Izvestia from 1997 to 2000, from September 2000 to June 2003, and the radio station Ekho Moskvy from September 2001 to June 2003.
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In 2005, Vladimir Kara-Murza produced a four-part TV documentary, They Chose Freedom, dedicated to the history of the Soviet dissident movement.
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On 24 March 2014, Kara-Murza, Anne Applebaum, and Vladimir Bukovsky took part in a discussion following a London screening of the film.
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In 2011, Vladimir Kara-Murza published his first book, Reform or Revolution: The Quest for Responsible Government in the First Russian State Duma, which recounts the unsuccessful attempt by the Cadets or Constitutional Democratic Party to form a government during the brief existence of the first Russian Parliament or Duma from April to July 1906.
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Putin's word was therefore "void of value", wrote Vladimir Kara-Murza, citing as evidence the false statements made by the Russian President and his broken promises.
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Putin soft-pedaled his response to the opposition during the Sochi Olympics, Vladimir Kara-Murza wrote in an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, published on 26 February 2014.
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From 1999 to 2001, Vladimir Kara-Murza was a member of the Democratic Choice of Russia party; from 2001 to 2008 he was a member of the Union of Right Forces.
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Vladimir Kara-Murza has been in opposition to Vladimir Putin since 2000, backing liberal candidate Grigory Yavlinsky in the 2000 presidential election.
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Vladimir Kara-Murza was a candidate for election to the Russian parliament, or State Duma, in the 2003 parliamentary election, running in Moscow's Chertanovsky district.
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Vladimir Kara-Murza's candidacy was endorsed jointly by the Union of Right Forces and Yabloko.
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The candidate from the United Russia ruling party Vladimir Gruzdev attempted to have him removed from the ballot; the lighting on Kara-Murza's campaign billboards and the sound during his televised debates were turned off; and unlawful carousel voting was discovered on election day.
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In October 2007, Vladimir Kara-Murza was one of organisers of the "Rally of Free People" held on Moscow's Triumfalnaya Square in support of Bukovsky's presidential nomination.
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At the founding convention of Solidarnost, Russia's united democratic movement, in December 2008, Vladimir Kara-Murza was elected to the movement's federal council, placing second out of 77 candidates, behind Nemtsov.
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Vladimir Kara-Murza was re-elected to the Solidarnost council in 2010 and 2013.
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Vladimir Kara-Murza is a coordinator of the Open Russia Foundation, founded by Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
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Vladimir Kara-Murza is deputy chairman and heads Open elections project designed to promote free and fair elections in Russia; a task he has noted is exceedingly difficult given the government's ability to silence opposition and manipulate elections.
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McCain's choice of Vladimir Kara-Murza was described by Politico as a "final dig" at Putin, of whom McCain was a vocal critic, and at US President Donald Trump, for his apparent closeness to the Russian president.
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In July 2012, Vladimir Kara-Murza reported that he had been denied access a few days earlier to the Russian Embassy in Washington, DC This decision was taken on the orders of the ambassador himself on the grounds that Vladimir Kara-Murza was "no longer a journalist".
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In June 2013, in an interview with France 24 television, Vladimir Kara-Murza discussed the proposed version of the Magnitsky law then being debated in the European Parliament.
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Vladimir Kara-Murza spoke in favour of such laws, and noted that the list of persons covered by the US law was being expanded.
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Vladimir Kara-Murza distinguished between those in the European Parliament who were "friends of Russia" and those who were "friends of Putin".
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Vladimir Kara-Murza explained the appeal to US legislators by saying that Russia's law-enforcement agencies, unfortunately, had declined to investigate these recorded and documented statements although incitement to harm an individual was a crime according to the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.
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On 18 May 2015, the daily newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda reported that Yevgeny Alexeyevich Fyodorov, a State Duma deputy for United Russia, had requested the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation to assess whether Kasyanov and Vladimir Kara-Murza had not committed an act of treason, under Article 275 of the RF Criminal Code, by submitting the above list of eight names to members of the US Congress.
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On 26 May 2015, Vladimir Kara-Murza was suddenly taken ill in Moscow during a meeting.
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Vladimir Kara-Murza had eaten lunch at a restaurant and then had a two-hour meeting, during which he consumed nothing and felt normal, before becoming ill over a ten to fifteen minute period, leading to vomiting.
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On 15 August 2015, Mikhail Khodorkovsky commented with delight that Vladimir Kara-Murza had returned to work co-ordinating the Open Elections project.
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Vladimir Kara-Murza is working to provide free and fair elections for the Duma.
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On 2 February 2017, Vladimir Kara-Murza was again hospitalised after the onset of the same symptoms as his prior illness.
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Vladimir Kara-Murza was put in a medically-induced coma and was on life support.
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Vladimir Kara-Murza was treated at the same hospital by the same medical team who had already saved his life in 2015.
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Vladimir Kara-Murza's lawyer sent the Russian Investigative Committee a request to open a criminal case into the alleged poisoning.
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In February 2021, a Bellingcat joint investigation with The Insider and Der Spiegel said that Vladimir Kara-Murza had been followed by the same FSB unit that allegedly poisoned Alexei Navalny before he fell ill in 2015 and 2017.
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On Monday 11 April 2022, during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Kara-Murza was arrested outside his house in Russia on charges of disobeying police orders, and faced up to 15 days in jail or a small fine.
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On 22 April 2022, Vladimir Kara-Murza was charged by a Russian court for allegedly spreading false information about the Russian military.
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In October 2022, Vladimir Kara-Murza was awarded the Vaclav Havel Human Rights Prize by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.
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Vladimir Kara-Murza's conviction is the longest sentence for political activity since the fall of the Soviet Union, and the length of the sentence is comparable only to Stalin's purges in the 1930s.
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Vladimir Kara-Murza compared his case to show trials from the Stalin era.
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On 29 January 2024, it was reported that Vladimir Kara-Murza had disappeared after prison authorities informed his lawyers that he was no longer held at IK-6.
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On 1 August 2024, Vladimir Kara-Murza was one of sixteen prisoners held in Russia who were pardoned and released as part of the 2024 Russian prisoner exchange.
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On 3 September 2024, Russian President Vladimir Kara-Murza Putin visited Mongolia, where he was welcomed with a red carpet reception despite an ICC arrest warrant related to alleged war crimes in Ukraine.