Karl Altau, JBANC
Vladimir Kara-Murza is not your average Russian citizen.
You may have recently read that he was detained on April 11, 2022, in Moscow.
Russian authorities declared him a “foreign agent” and ordered his arrest for allegedly spreading false information about the Russian military in its war against Ukraine. The court ordered that he be held until June 12. What really might happen is unclear. Detention in Russia has ominous implications.
Born in Moscow (an ancestor was Latvia’s first ambassador to the United Kingdom) Kara-Murza was educated at Cambridge and has worked as a journalist for many years. More recently, he has been a regular contributor to the Washington Post.
He was very close to Boris Nemtsov, the opposition leader who was murdered near the Kremlin in 2015. Kara-Murza was poisoned that same year, and again in 2017. It is believed that the poisonings were orchestrated by the Russian security services because of his political activities in support of the opposition. There have been similarities with other cases, such as the 2020 poisoning of Alexei Navalny.
Kara-Murza spoke in Washington, DC at the 2013 Baltic conference organized by the Joint Baltic American National Committee (JBANC). He was joined by Bill Browder, the American-born and London-based financier and human rights advocate. Browder, who had been the largest foreign investor in Russia, was the victim of an enormous tax-fraud case against his investment company. A bad situation turned much worse when one of Browder’s employees, the tax lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, died in prison in 2009 due to willful mistreatment by prison officials. The cause of Magnitsky gradually grew to such a degree that the U.S. Congress passed the bipartisan Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act of 2012. It was signed into law by President Barack Obama in December 2012. The aim was to punish Russian officials responsible for Magnitsky’s death. But it also pointed to an increasing problem with human rights abuses and blinding corruption by the Russian government against its citizens.
Thanks to the work of Browder, Nemtsov, Kara-Murza, and others, this led to the expanded Global Magnitsky Act of 2016. That law authorizes the United States to sanction foreign government officials and to freeze their assets and ban them from entering the U.S.
In advocating for these laws, Kara-Murza worked closely with Representatives Chris Smith of New Jersey and James McGovern of Massachusetts, and two Senators in particular – Senators Ben Cardin of Maryland, and John McCain of Arizona. In fact, when McCain died in 2018, Kara-Murza was one of the pallbearers.
Kara-Murza sought during these years to help organize the political opposition against the regime of Vladimir Putin. He has campaigned in the West but believes that it is most important to do so in Russia. His bravery in doing so shows an individual who is moved by his belief that Russia can and should be better. He faces odds that have seemed increasingly insurmountable in an authoritarian state, in which human rights and freedoms of speech and assembly are being erased by the day.
The new case against Kara-Murza was made in the aftermath of Putin’s new and massive invasion of Ukraine on February 24. In stepping up efforts to extinguish dissent during its war against Ukraine, the Kremlin has shut down the last independent media outlets. Tens of thousands of Russians have fled the country in protest over the Kremlin’s policies and for fear of running afoul of the Kremlin and the security organs.
The war in Ukraine is a clear case of good versus evil. Russia invaded a sovereign country to bring it under its control. In doing so, Russia is waging a terror war against civilians, committing unspeakable atrocities, and justifying this by eliminating the Ukrainian identity, call it “de-Ukrainianization” or genocide. Ukraine is fighting for its existence. Kara-Murza recognizes that.
The root of the war in Ukraine is the failed Russian state, which threatens not just Ukraine, and its neighbors, including the Baltics, but the entire world order. To remove the rot, Putin must be ousted. There is no place for him in a future Russia or a future Europe. Kara-Murza has devoted his life and his principles for a Russia that he loves and one which he believes deserves a brighter future and is not weighed down by false narratives about its destructive imperial past and abject neglect of its own society and citizens.
Thankfully, a measure of karma has sunk in. Russian military incompetence, and the bravery of Ukrainians to defy the invasion, have struck the Putin forces a harsh blow. As Western security assistance flows into the country, Ukrainians have slowly begun to turn the tide. We’ve seen the hundreds of Russian tanks blown to bits, and the thousands of Russian invaders expended as cheap cannon fodder. What was once improbable is now possible. Ukraine is winning. If Ukraine does survive, and Putin is defeated, then the opposition in Russia has an opportunity to do something that was denied after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
I’ve known Kara-Murza for over a dozen years and have met him on numerous occasions. One memorable occasion was on February 18, 2014, when I had the honor of being on a panel with him to brief members of the Latvian parliament (Saeima) on the U.S. Magnitsky law. The next two days were the bloodiest of the Maidan protests in Kyiv. The brutal crackdown against Ukrainians was because they were protesting their governments turn away from Europe and its cozying up to Russia. Russia’s first invasion of Ukraine, with the takeover of Crimea, was also about to take place during those days.
The last time I met Kara-Murza in person was on March 11, 2020, at the Library of Congress during a reception in celebration of the Day of Restitution of the Independence of Lithuania. It was one of the final events on Capitol Hill before Congress shut down during the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. He was as pleasant as his usual self, always asking about the family.
Those two events symbolically bookend a time when there was an effort to expand efforts to introduce Magnitsky laws in other countries and six years later when we could mark the 30th anniversary of a Baltic country that had regained its independence. During those years, we remember the oft-repeated phrase that “freedom is not free.” In less than two months, we have seen thousands of Ukrainians die for their freedom. We cannot let their sacrifices be in vain.
I hope that Kara-Murza emerges not as an “enemy of the people” in Russia but in his rightful place as one of the new leaders of that country and a bearer of universal principles of freedom, democracy, decency, and human rights. A U.S. Senate resolution introduced on May 16 urges the U.S. government and others to work to secure his release.
We can help by spreading the word: free Kara-Murza! His freedom means that Russia has a chance to be normal.
Winter War Lessons