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Vladimir Kara-Murza dies hard. He has withstood not one but two poisoning attempts by Vladimir Putin’s government. He has withstood the targeting of Russia’s officials. And he has borne the ramifications of the West’s turn away from confrontation with a regime he understands for its villainy.
Now, Kara-Murza is facing what could be a final challenge — a trial against him based on the 2022 laws against “misinformation” about the Russian military in the Ukraine war, by an authoritarian regime bent on silencing all its critics and sending them into the dark quiet of a cell where they will end their days. Kara-Murza is forty-one, the father of three, a former advisor to assassinated Putin critic Boris Nemtsov and a longtime advocate against the regime.
Now he faces the prospect of never seeing his family again — all because he had the audacity to, on top of these other insults, express the truth about the Putin government and its illegal war of aggression to the State House in Arizona. He has now been imprisoned for a year, during which his weight and health have declined precipitously.
The Washington Post, where Kara-Murza has contributed columns over the years, published his final statement to the Russian court Tuesday. He showed no remorse, and did not ask for acquittal. He was defiant to the end:
“I also know that the day will come when the darkness over our country will dissipate. When black will be called black and white will be called white; when at the official level it will be recognized that two times two is still four; when a war will be called a war, and a usurper a usurper; and when those who kindled and unleashed this war, rather than those who tried to stop it, will be recognized as criminals.
“This day will come as inevitably as spring follows even the coldest winter. And then our society will open its eyes and be horrified by what terrible crimes were committed on its behalf. From this realization, from this reflection, the long, difficult but vital path toward the recovery and restoration of Russia, its return to the community of civilized countries, will begin.
“Even today, even in the darkness surrounding us, even sitting in this cage, I love my country and believe in our people. I believe that we can walk this path.”
Kara-Murza will be sentenced on Monday April 17. Unlike Americans like Brittney Griner, there is no massive surge in news forcing the White House to seek his freedom. And so Putin’s regime seems likely to exact its death-bound revenge once again against a defiant critic.
Ivan Turgenev wrote: “There was a time when I used to say: ‘I will do many things in life, and refuse to die before I have completed those tasks, for I am a giant.’ But now I have indeed a giant’s task in hand — the task of dying as though death were nothing to me.” And Kara-Murza seems up for the task.
