- A prominent Putin critic and Washington Post columnist was arrested in Moscow on Monday.
- According to The Post, he was arrested after criticizing the Kremlin in a CNN interview.
- His arrest follows a new draconian media censorship law in Russia.
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According to The Post, Putin critic and Washington Post columnist Vladimir Kara-Murza was arrested in Moscow on Monday after he criticized Putin in a television interview the same day.
Kara-Murza is a politician who has routinely fought against Putin’s regime and has survived two poisonings in 2015 and 2017, according to The Washington Post. Independent investigative units such as Bellingcat have claimed that FSB agents involved in the poisoning of Alexei Navalny also went after Kara-Murza before poisoning him, a claim the Kremlin denies.
Kara-Murza also campaigned for the US to pass the Magnitsky Law in 2012 and advocated sanctions against people close to Putin.
His arrest came the same day he was interviewed by CNN, where he called Putin’s government “a regime of murderers.”
The arrest also came weeks after Putin unveiled and passed the Duma a draconian media censorship law that would allow the government to jail journalists who the Kremlin believes are reporting “fake” news about the military. Reporters and private individuals can be sentenced to up to 15 years in prison and cannot publicly use the word “war” to describe the war in Ukraine.
Fred Ryan, publisher and CEO of The Washington Post, said, “Vladimir Kara-Murza has been tireless and courageous in his efforts to uncover the truth about his country’s leadership.”
“Following poisoning and other serious threats, this outrageous detention is the latest step in Vladimir Putin’s ongoing efforts to silence Kara-Murza and hide the truth about the atrocities Putin is committing on behalf of the Russian people,” Ryan said in the Explanation. “No one should be fooled by the Russian government’s fabricated allegations and slanders, and Kara-Murza should be released immediately.”
In one of Kara-Murza’s most recent columns for The Post on March 7, he wrote: “Within a single week, all — literally all — of Russia’s remaining independent media voices were silenced in a coordinated effort by the Attorney General’s Office and the chief censorship agency of the Government.”
The columnist’s wife, Evgenia Kara-Murza, tweeted a call for her husband’s release.
“Twice the Russian authorities tried to kill my husband for lobbying for sanctions against thieves and murderers, and now they want to jail him for calling their bloody war a WAR.” she tweeted. “I demand the immediate release of my husband!”