Russia has opened fraud proceedings against opposition activist Vladimir Kara-Murza, who in the past had survived two alleged poisonings in Russia, for spreading “false information,” his lawyer said Friday, a week after he was sentenced to 15 days for fraud. after the CNN broadcast, an interview with Kara-Murza in which he called the Kremlin a “regime of assassins. “
Russia has initiated fraud proceedings against Kara-Murza for “knowingly spreading false information about the use of the armed forces of the Russian Federation,” his lawyer, Vadim Prokhorov, wrote in a Facebook post.
The case comes a week after Kara-Murza was sentenced to 15 days in prison for preventing police from approaching his home in Moscow, according to Prokhorov, who said at the time he would appeal the decision.
Kara-Murza’s arrest was reported hours after CNN shared an interview in which he called the Russian government a “regime of murderers. “
Secretary of State Antony Blinken wrote in a tweet Monday that the United States was “concerned” about Kara-Murza’s detention and called for the Russian opponent’s prompt release.
The Russian historian also told MSNBC on Sunday that Russia had shut down “all independent TV channels” in a “censorship war. “
Russia has faced a “total blackout,” Kara-Murza told MSNBC, noting that more than 15,000 people have been arrested for protesting against the war in Ukraine.
“I have no doubt that the Putin regime will end this war in Ukraine,” Kara-Murza told CNN on Monday.
Kara-Murza is the former deputy leader of the People’s Freedom Party, an opposition party discovered in the last years of the Soviet Union. A vocal critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, he has spoken to several US media outlets condemning Russia’s war in Ukraine in recent years. months. Kara-Murza was also a colleague of opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, who was assassinated in Moscow in 2015 while helping organize an anti-Russia rally for a war in eastern Ukraine. Kara-Murza survived two suspected poisonings in Russia in 2015 and 2017. An investigation via the news site Bellingcat, Insider and Der Spiegel found that agents from the Russian Federal Security Service’s poison control team followed Kara-Murza and Alexei Navalny, a leader of the Russian opposition who was also allegedly poisoned in 2020, just before the two fell ill several years apart. The Russian government has refused to investigate the events, but denies any involvement in Nemtsov’s death or Navalny’s poi. dreaming
Dmitry Muratov, editor-in-chief of the independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta, which won the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize for its Russian government research policy, allegedly attacked an exercise coming from Moscow last week. Many of the country’s independent media outlets were shut down after the invasion began, and Russia announced last week that it would close the local offices of several human rights organizations that had condemned the country’s invasion of Ukraine.
Navalny is in a sinister line of Putin’s belligerent parts that have allegedly been poisoned (Forbes)
Nobel Prize-winning Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov assaulted in Russia (Forbes)