His wife said that the health of the Russian opponent, Kara-Murza, was worrying

“I am obviously concerned,” Evgenia Kara-Murza told AFP in Geneva on the sidelines of the Geneva Summit on Human Rights and Democracy.

He said Vladimir Kara-Murza was the victim of a “cynical act of revenge” by the Kremlin.

“Her health is getting worse,” she added, referring to her 41-year-old husband, with whom she has three children.

Kara Murza was sentenced on April 17 to 25 years in prison on various charges, including “high treason”.

He was one of the last critical voices of the Kremlin, who was neither in prison nor in exile abroad.

The opponent already had serious health problems prior to his arrest, including a nervous system disease called polyneuropathy.

According to his wife, the disease resulted from two poisoning attempts in 2015 and 2017.

Evgenia Kara-Murza fears that her husband’s conviction will further aggravate their delicate situation. Vladimir Kara-Murza has appealed the verdict against him, but his wife has no doubts that she will be refused.

Unconditional support

For Kara-Murza, the denunciation of her husband is “pure and cynical revenge against the Russian government.”

“The system clearly sees my husband as his personal enemy,” she says. He says the poisonings were meant to “kill, not threaten”.

Despite the dangers, her husband did not hesitate to return to Russia. decision he supported. “Of course I was afraid for his life,” he explains with teary eyes.

He continues, “Vladimir and I have carefully built our little world, our children, and our family for years.”

“But I know what he’s fighting for,” he adds, praising the fact that “in spite of all the dangers, in spite of all the attacks” he remained “true to himself.”

“If I accepted him as he was more than 20 years ago,” he says in the interview, “it would be hypocritical to ask him to change now. It wouldn’t be Vladimir.”

“The only option for me is to be on his side, to fight with him and to fight for him,” he says.

cracks

He admits that the situation is “very painful” for the couple’s three children, but Vladimir Kara-Murza “somehow managed to remain a good father to them, even behind bars.”

“It teaches them a very valuable lesson: they must bravely confront those who oppress them, they must never give up, they must accept the risks, recognize them and keep fighting.”

Asked if she thought others would follow suit, she recalled that “20,000 people have been arbitrarily arrested” since Russia launched its all-out invasion of Ukraine last year.

That she dares to protest at one point that “the regime is using the full arsenal of Soviet-style repressive methods against anti-war protesters” means that “there are probably millions of people who oppose the regime, but are too afraid to speak out.”

He stressed that in the Soviet era, “mass demonstrations became possible only when the system began to crack,” expressing confidence that “it will happen (…) when Putin’s regime begins to emerge.”

Asked when this would happen, she suggested that a clear victory for Ukraine after “more than two decades of impunity for Vladimir Putin’s regime (…) would send a signal to the Kremlin that it will not get away with such crimes…”.