Kara-Murza: Remember, Russia is more than the Kremlin

Seven weeks after his release from solitary confinement, Vladimir Kara-Murza has called on “good people” to join his fight for the freedom of Putin's other political prisoners.

Vladimir Kara-Murza, who was released in a prisoner swap in August, said millions of Russians opposed Vladimir Putin and his war in Ukraine and that establishing democracy in Russia was the only way to bring peace and stability to Europe and the world to secure.

Citing letters he received in prison from ordinary Russians lining up to sign nomination papers for anti-war presidential candidate Boris Nadezhdin, Kara-Murza said growing opposition to Putin's re-election showed the regime's fragility.

“Suddenly everyone saw through the lie spread by Putin's propaganda, the lie that all Russians supported his regime, that all Russians supported his war,” he said at a Sept. 27 awards dinner in Washington hosted by the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA). ) was organized. ) “I will never forget the letter that a young woman from the southern Black Sea city of Novorossiysk wrote to me after describing how she waited in that long line of like-minded people, mostly young people, to sign the nomination petitions for the anti-war candidate. She ended that letter by saying, “I never realized how many of us there are.”

Thousands have been arrested for opposing the war and many are still being held in the Putin regime's gulags, Kara-Murza said in Washington after receiving the Freedom Fighter award.

He argued that opposition to the regime is the true face of a country where protest is criminalized and people are afraid to speak out. It is the Russia that Putin does not want to show to the world, he said.

“This is my Russia, the Russia I love, the Russia I call home. Not the Russia of Vladimir Putin, but the Russia of Boris Nemtsov and Alexei Navalny,” he said. “Not the Russia of murderers and war criminals who sit in the Kremlin, but the Russia of decent and kind-hearted people who oppose them.”

Kara-Murza, who was poisoned twice (probably by the Putin regime) and was convinced he would die in prison, said his release showed the powerful impact of activists around the world who worked tirelessly in the name of freedom. It also shows the importance of pushing for the release of both Russians and Westerners held in the Kremlin's prisons, he said.

“Last month's prisoner exchange, which saved 16 lives from the hell that is Vladimir Putin's modern-day gulag, showed once again that public opinion matters and that sustained efforts by good people in democratic countries are ultimately stronger than any dictatorship “I hope to be,” he said. “And the strongest message that the world’s democracies sent in this exchange was to insist that these were not just Western hostages being held by Putin, but also Russian political prisoners.”

Kara-Murza, a dual British-Russian citizen who studied history at Cambridge University, said evidence from the past suggests Putin's regime will not last and will collapse quickly, like the Romanov Empire and the Soviet Union before it .

“Russia is not limited by the walls of the Kremlin,” he said. “The best promise for long-term security, stability and democracy on our continent, the best promise for a Europe that would finally be whole, free and at peace, will be a democratic Russia. I believe in that promise with all my heart.”

Europe's edge is CEPA's online journal that covers important foreign policy issues in Europe and North America. All opinions are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position or views of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis.