On April 11, 2024, we are re-releasing our 2021 episode “The Democracy Activist Putin Wants Dead.” There is a very somber reason for this re-release. This date marks the two-year anniversary of Vladimir Kara-Murza’s arrest and imprisonment on charges of “public dissemination of deliberately false information.” Vladimir, one of the boldest and most eloquent Russian opposition figures, committed the great “crime” of speaking out against Russian president Vladimir Putin’s war of aggression on Ukraine. For speaking the truth, he is now serving a 25-year sentence in a remote and notoriously harsh penal colony. Vladimir’s health, already compromised by two nearly fatal poisonings ordered by the Kremlin, is declining. Time is running out. It is imperative for people everywhere to keep advocating for Vladimir’s release, to keep demanding that western governments intervene, to keep reminding the Putin regime that there is a cost to making dissidents into political prisoners. If we hope to hear Vladimir’s voice again one day, speaking out boldly for democracy and human rights in Russia, then we must speak boldly now in calling for his release.
This re-release features a condensed version of the episode created from two conversations that Lantos Foundation President Dr. Katrina Lantos Swett had with Vladimir in late 2020 and early 2021.
Read Vladimir Kara-Murza’s opinion pieces in The Washington Post
Vladimir Kara-Murza’s last statement to Moscow City Court
The Price of Conviction podcast (produced by the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights)
Russian dissident Kara-Murza moved to isolation cell in new Siberian prison (Reuters, Jan. 30, 2024)