Vladimir Kara-Murza: Family Grieves Over Putin Critic’s Sentence To Prison
Since her husband, Vladimir Kara-Murza, was found guilty of treason for publicly criticizing President Vladimir Putin and Russia’s conflict with Ukraine, Evgenia Kara-Murza has been able to get by on autopilot.
The opposition leader from Russia was sentenced to 25 years in a maximum security facility on Monday, and neither his wife nor the couple’s three kids know when they will ever see him again.
She has been so vocal herself that she can’t take the chance of going to Russia in case she too gets arrested.
Evgenia said over the phone from the US, where the family lives for safety, “I’m afraid they might detain me to put pressure on Vladimir, and I can’t afford for him to lose my voice as well, or leaving our kids without both parents.”
She claims to be “heartbroken” and hasn’t even been permitted to speak to her husband since his imprisonment more than a year ago. However, for the time being, she has numb herself to the gravity of the verdict in order to concentrate on gaining support from around the world.
Vladimir Kara-Murza is a British citizen as well, but his own government has lagged behind the US, Canada, and Latvia in taking action to censure Russian individuals they believe are to blame for the activist’s suffering.
The Federal Security Service (FSB) agents are suspected of having ties to Kara-Murza’s unexpected, catastrophic illnesses in 2015 and 2017 that were brought on by an unidentified toxin, according to a Friday statement from the UK Foreign Office.
Although Evgenia applauded the action, it falls well short of the more than 30 names she proposed.
She told me immediately after the news, “It simply saddens me that it took a year of wrongful detention, a dreadful sentence of 25 years in a harsh regime, and a very alarming decline in my husband’s health for the British government to move to a somewhat harsher response.
Vladimir Kara-Murza is once more experiencing symptoms related to his illness, including numbness in his left hand and feet. Polyneuropathy, a condition that affects the nerves, has been identified by a prison doctor.
With consistent exercise, he was able to manage those symptoms for years, but now, according to Evgenia, they have reappeared and appear to be worsening. “I think the Russian authorities are slowly killing a person with it as torture.”