Putin Critic Sentenced to 25 Years on Treason Charges

Moscow( Reuters) On Monday, a Moscow court found vocal Kremlin writer Vladimir Kara-Murza guilty of treason and other offenses he denied committing, giving him the harshest sentence of his kind since Russia invaded Ukraine.

Three-time opposition legislator and Russian and British passport holder Kara-Murza spent years criticizing President Vladimir Putin and urging Western governments to impose sanctions on Russia and specific Russians for alleged violations of human rights.

State lawyers, who had asked for a 25-year words, had charged him with treason, among other offenses, and with defaming the Russian army for spreading” knowingly false information” about its actions in what Moscow refers to as its” special military surgery” in Ukraine.

Kara-Murza, whose family resides in Washington, claimed that Russia was ruled by a” government of murderers” in an interview with CNN that was broadcast years before his arrest. Additionally, he had made accusations against Russia that it had bombed civilians in Ukraine in remarks in the US and Europe, which Moscow had refuted.

After learning that he would be sentenced to spend the last 25 years in a maximum-security prison colony, Kara-Murza, who had gently observed the proceedings from the safety of his glass courtroom cage, uttered the well-known opposition slogan” Russia will be free.”

He also grinned and said, in the words of one of his attorneys, Maria Eismont, that he saw the terrible punishment as a testament to his success as an opposition lawmaker.

” My self-esteem has gone up, and I understand that I did everything right ,” the man said when he learned that his lifespan was 25 years. She said,” It’s’s the highest score I could have gotten for what I did, for the values I upheld as a citizen and patriot.

Kara-Murza compared his trial, which took place behind closed doors, to Josef Stalin’s’s show tests from the 1930s in his last speech to the court next year. He argued that he was glad of all of his statements and declined to ask the court to exonerate him.

Eismont announced that Kara-Murza’s’s team may challenge the verdict on Monday, which she claimed had been tainted by formal infractions.

When questioned about the ruling, the Kremlin responded that it did not comment on court rulings.

SUMMONED ENVOY

Britain summoned the Russian ambassador to protest what it claimed was a” politically motivated” conviction in London, where it imposed sanctions on the judge in charge of the case for alleged human rights violations in 2020.

Kara-Murza had been punished for bravely speaking out against Russia’s’s war in Ukraine, according to British Ambassador Deborah Bronnert, who demanded his immediate release outside the court in Moscow.

Speaking next to her, U.S. Ambassador Lynne Tracy claimed that Kara-Murza’s’s judgment was an effort to quell protest.

According to Tracy,” criminalizing criticism of authority behavior is a sign of weakness, not power.”

Russia implemented broad military censorship laws that have been used to silence dissenting voices soon after sending tens of thousands of soldiers into Ukraine in February of last year.

Presently,” discrediting” the army carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison; however, intentionally spreading false information about it can result in an 18-year prison term.

Russian pro-government officials claim that maintaining social cohesion is essential, viewing the fight in Ukraine as an existential issue with the West. They have characterized Russian residents who criticize Moscow’s’s actions in Ukraine as members of a pro-Western five paragraph attempting to undermine the defense effort.

Kara-Murza experienced sudden illness half, in 2015 and 2017, during what he claimed were illnesses by the Soviet security products. On both occasions, the victim went into a stupor before recovering.

The role of Russian authorities in those incidents was denied. According to Kara-Murza’s’s attorneys, this is why he has chronic, a profound nerve disorder.

After an investigation by a human doctor at the end of March revealed his condition was getting worse, Eismont, his attorney, stated that his legal team was worried about his health.

The leader of the R. Politik analysis firm, Tatiana Stanovaya, claimed that Kara-Murza’s’s campaign to impose sanctions on Russia had much irked the Kremlin and that his faith served as a warning.

She wrote on the Telegram messaging app,” This is verdict aimed at sending a signal and probably not the last of its kind.”

” In the future, if they are on Russian soil and a critic of the Putin regime, the security products can be much less picky and seize people.” This is a warning to all anti-Putin activists:” Don’t come back or we’ll’ll put you in jail, de facto for life.”

( Additional reporting by Mark Trevelyan; editing by John Stonestreet, Gareth Jones, and Guy Faulconbridge )