- Thu October 16, 2025 at 8:00 pm
Russian opposition leader and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Vladimir Kara-Murza has been the target of two poisoning assassination attempts by the Putin regime. A key advocate for Russian sanctions, he was sentenced to 25 years in prison for denouncing the invasion of Ukraine. He was freed in a historic East-West prisoner exchange in 2024.
A close colleague of the slain opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, Kara-Murza has served as deputy leader of the People’s Freedom Party and was a candidate for the Russian Parliament. He played a key role in the adoption of Magnitsky sanctions in several countries, which provide for governmental sanctions against foreign individuals who have committed human rights abuses or been involved in significant corruption, against top Russian officials.
For this work he was twice poisoned and left in a coma; an investigation identified Russian security officers behind the attacks. In April 2022 Kara-Murza was arrested in Moscow for denouncing the Ukraine invasion, sentenced to 25 years for “high treason,” and kept in solitary confinement at a prison in Siberia. He was released in August 2024 as part of the largest East-West prisoner exchange since the Cold War, negotiated by the US and German governments.
Kara-Murza is a contributing writer at the Washington Post, winning the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for his columns written from prison, and previously worked for several other media organizations. He has directed three documentary films and is the author or contributor to several books on Russian history and politics.
Kara-Murza holds an MA in history from Cambridge. He is vice president at the Free Russia Foundation, senior advisor at Human Rights First, and senior fellow at the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights. He was the founding chairman of the Boris Nemtsov Foundation for Freedom.