Russia Arrests Opposition Politician Vladimir Kara-Murza, Colleague Says

Topline

Russian opposition politician Vladimir Kara-Murza—who previously survived two suspected poisonings in Russia—was arrested near his home in Moscow, another opposition figure said Monday, the same day Kara-Murza appeared in a CNN video criticizing Russia’s “regime of murderers” as the country continues to clamp down on criticism of the government.

Vladimir Kara-Murza, Russian opposition activist lays flowers near where Russian opposition leader … [+] Boris Nemtsov was gunned down in Moscow.

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Key Facts

Kara-Murza was taken to the police department in Moscow’s Khamovniki district for unknown charges, according to Ilya Yashin, an opposition colleague of Kara-Murza and former head of the Krasnoselsky municipal district in Moscow.

The arrest was reported hours after CNN shared an interview in which Kara-Murza called the Russian government a “regime of murderers.”

The Russian author and historian also told MSNBC on Sunday Russia had shut down “every independent television network” in a “war of censorship.”

Russia has faced a “total blackout,” Kara-Murza told MSNBC, noting that more than 15,000 people have been detained for protesting the war in Ukraine.

Key Background

Kara-Murza is the former deputy leader of the People’s Freedom Party, an opposition party founded in the last years of the Soviet Union. An outspoken critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, he has spoken to several U.S. outlets condemning Russia’s war in Ukraine in recent months. Kara-Murza was also a colleague of opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, who was assassinated in Moscow in 2015 while helping to organize a rally against Russia’s backing of a war in eastern Ukraine. Kara-Murza has survived two suspected poisonings in Russia in 2015 and 2017. An investigation from news site Bellingcat, the Insider and Der Spiegel found that operatives of Russia’s Federal Security Service poison squad tracked both Kara-Murza and Alexei Navalny, a Russian opposition leader who was also allegedly poisoned in 2020, just before the two fell ill several years apart. The Russian government has refused to investigate the events, but denies any involvement in Nemtsov’s death or Navalny’s poisoning.

Tangent

Dmitry Muratov, the editor-in-chief of Russia’s independent Novaya Gazeta newspaper who won the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize for his investigative coverage of the Russian government, was reportedly attacked on a train from Moscow last week. Many of the country’s independent media outlets were shut down after the invasion began, and Russia announced last week it was shutting down the local offices of several human rights organizations that had condemned the country’s invasion of Ukraine.

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