The Russian opposition activist Vladimir Kara-Murza, who has been imprisoned in Moscow since April, is being investigated for “high treason”, as the authorities step up their case against him for his criticism of the war in Ukraine.
The latest charges against Kara-Murza, a veteran critic of President Vladimir Putin, stem from allegations of “longtime cooperation with a Nato state”, according to the Russian state news agency Tass.
If convicted, he faces up to 20 years in prison.
“Our client has been charged after speaking out critically against the Russian authorities three times, at public events in Lisbon, Helsinki and Washington,” Kara-Murza’s lawyer, Vadim Prokhorov, said on Thursday. “These speeches did not pose any threat; it was public, open criticism.”
Kara-Murza, who holds Russian and British citizenship and studied at the University of Cambridge, was detained in April and charged under newly introduced laws that in effect criminalised any dissent against Russia’s war in Ukraine.
At the time of his arrest, Kara-Murza was one of the few prominent opposition figures who chose to stay in Russia. Many have fled due to safety concerns since the outbreak of the war. Hours before his detention, Kara-Murza appeared on CNN where he described the Kremlin as a “regime of murderers”.
In 2015 and 2017, Kara-Murza fell into two separate comas in Moscow after displaying symptoms that doctors said were consistent with poisoning. Kara-Murza – a close friend of the former opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, who was shot and killed in 2015 – nearly died from kidney failure in the first incident.
He said the alleged poisonings were in retaliation for his lobbying efforts to impose US and EU sanctions against Russian officials accused of human rights abuses. Kara-Murza was subsequently branded a foreign agent in Russia, a restrictive label used to designate what authorities deem to be foreign-funded organisations and individuals.
In a tweet on Thursday, his wife, Evgenia Kara-Murza, said she “couldn’t be prouder of” her husband.
“The portrait of a true Russian patriot: a ‘foreign agent’ imprisoned for advocating for sanctions against the murderous regime and accused of high treason by the said regime. I couldn’t be prouder of you, my love!”
Kara-Murza’s latest charge is the second high-profile treason case in Russia this year.
Last month, a court sentenced the former journalist Ivan Safronov to 22 years in prison on trumped-up treason charges, a record sentence that was widely seen as a blow against independent reporting in Russia.