Relatives and foundation fear for the life of imprisoned Kremlin critic Vladimir Kara-Mursa (42): is he Putin’s next victim?

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Russian President Vladimir Putin (71) unscrupulously eliminates anyone who could harm him or become dangerous. Alexei Navalny (†47), the Kremlin’s best-known imprisoned critic, died on Friday. He collapsed in prison camp No. 3 in the northwestern Siberian Arctic settlement of Charp. He never fully recovered from a poison attack in 2020.

Apparently it was also Putin’s accomplices who were behind the assassination attempt on Russian helicopter pilot Maksim Kuzminov († 28). Kuzminov, who received almost half a million euros for defecting to the West, was found dead in Spain last week with multiple gunshot wounds. Will the killing continue?

According to the human rights organization Memoria, about 650 political prisoners are languishing in Russian prisons. After Navalny’s death, it is probably Vladimir Kara-Mursa (42) who is best known. In April 2023, the Moscow court sentenced him to 25 years in prison under “strict prison conditions”.

Kara-Mursa is accused of treason, disparagement of the Russian army and illegal work for an undesirable organization. He had sharply criticized Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. In 2015 and 2017, he was subjected to two poison attacks, both of which he narrowly survived.

“The same killer team” as Navalny

At the Free Russia Foundation, where Kara-Mursa became vice-president in 2019, there is great concern after Navalny’s death. President Natalia Arno (47), who also showed symptoms of poisoning last year, tells Blick: “There are hundreds of other political prisoners in Russia – and I worry for the lives of each and every one of them. I’m afraid Vladimir Kara-Mursa is one of the next targets.”

Kara-Mursa was poisoned twice by “the same hit squad” that also attacked Alexei Navalny with the nerve agent Novichok. “We are doing everything we can to free him,” says Natalia Arno. This included an international campaign and international trials.

In 2023, Kara-Mursa’s relatives had not heard from him for weeks. At the end of the year it was announced that he had been transferred to another prison camp – also to Siberia, just as Russian authorities had done with Navalny. In Omsk, the prominent prisoner will have to languish in a lonely cell measuring three by one and a half meters until the end of May. It is the strictest measure in the Russian penal system.

Smothering in the mini cell

On Monday morning, a lawyer from Omsk was able to visit him in colony No. 7. “Wladimir’s health is constantly deteriorating. His condition is incompatible with a prison sentence in a penal colony with a strict regime,” says Natalia Arno. The conditions are ‘torturous’. Ewgenia Kara-Mursa (43) reported to Blick in May 2023 that her husband had lost more than 20 kilos in the first weeks in the camp and had lost feeling in his feet and left hand.

In a recent interview with “Zeit” she describes her husband’s daily life. He is allowed to read and write letters for an hour and a half a day and to walk for the same amount of time. As soon as he sat down on a stool in the cell with the bed folded and closed his eyes, someone immediately shouted over the loudspeaker that he was not allowed to sleep during the day.

Critics are encouraging

Like Navalny, Kara-Mursa also returned to Russia after the poison attacks. “He couldn’t do anything about it,” says his wife. “In his worldview, he has no right to speak for those who are politically persecuted if he is unwilling to share their fate.” Moreover, a regime like Putin’s is based on fear and her husband ‘Volodya’ wanted to show that he was not afraid.

The fate of Navalny and Kara-Mursa is tragic, but at the same time encouraging, says Natalia Arno. “It is proof that there are Russians who believe in democracy and freedom and are willing to die for it.”

Source: Blick