KaraMurza was sentenced in April to a sentence that was unprecedented by Russian standards Alexander Nemenov/AFP October 27, 2021
Russian opponent Vladimir KaraMurza, who was sentenced to 25 years in prison for “high treason” for denouncing Moscow’s offensive against Ukraine, has arrived at the highsecurity Omsk penal colony in Siberia to serve his sentence, his lawyer said this Sunday with (24).
KaraMurza, who has dual Russian and British citizenship and is considered one of President Vladimir Putin’s main critics, was given an unprecedented sentence in April, prompting international leaders and his supporters to call for his release.
“Vladimir KaraMurza was transferred to the highsecurity penal colony IK6 in Omsk to serve his sentence,” his lawyer Vadim Prokhorov said on Facebook.
“He was immediately taken to an isolation cell,” he added.
Omsk is about 2,700 kilometers east of Moscow. The Russian penal system often takes weeks to transfer inmates to the country’s most remote prisons. Often the whereabouts of a prisoner in transit is unknown and he stops at several prisons along the way.
The lawyer warned that placing 42yearold KaraMurza in this type of cell endangers his fragile health. The opponent’s lawyers and family claim that he suffers from a nerve disease called polyneuropathy due to two poisoning attempts.
KaraMurza was found guilty of spreading “false information” about the Russian army and having ties to an “undesirable organization.” The trial took place behind closed doors.
O Military commander Igor Girkin, also called Igor Strelkov, is Ukrainian and lived in the Donetsk People’s Republic, a separatist region within Ukrainian territory that initially largely supported the arrival of Russian soldiers. Today the senior military officer who is also a blogger behind bars in Russia because he criticized the management of Wladimir Putin Conflict in a social network
Girkin was accused of extremism and arrested in July. Since then he has been behind bars awaiting trial. Today he was locked in a “glass cage” while he petitioned the Russian courts to have his detention lifted. The blogger was surrounded by journalists who photographed the then commander at close range
In July, Russian courts opened an “extremism” case against famous nationalist blogger and former eastern Ukraine separatist leader Igor Girkin, who sharply criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin. The influencer known on social media as Igor Strelkov supports the offensive in Ukraine but criticized the Russian leader on his social media account, which has around 875,000 followers
The opening of the proceedings was a clear signal of criticism of the government weeks after the brief uprising led by the paramilitary group Wagner. Girkin is accused of “public calls for extremist activities,” for which he faces a fiveyear prison sentence
The 52yearold is a former military commander of the selfproclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic and was a protagonist of the proRussian uprising in 2014, when the conflict began between Kiev and separatists in eastern Ukraine.
He was one of three people sentenced to life in prison by a Dutch court in 2022 for his role in the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 as it flew over Ukraine in 2014. In recent years he has become one of Putin’s most vocal critics and control of military operations in Ukraine
In one of his latest posts, the nationalist blogger called on the Russian president to hand over power to a successor. “The country will not survive another six years of cowardly mediocrity in power,” he wrote