Locked up for opposing Putin: Inside Vladimir Kara-Murza’s brutal prison ordeal

The British-Russian dissident was arrested in April 2022 for speaking out against Valdimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. He is now serving a 25-year sentence and his wife, Evgenia, does not know when she will be able to speak to him again. Tom Watling reports

Vladimir Kara-Murza inside a Moscow court shortly after his arrest (AFP/Getty)

The last time Vladimir Kara-Murza – Russia’s most prominent opposition leader after the death of Alexei Navalny – was allowed to speak to his family, his wife Evgenia declined the opportunity. It had been months since they last spoke.

Kara-Murza, who faces 25 years in a remote penal colony for speaking out against Vladimir Putin, the longest sentence handed to a Kremlin critic since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, was only allowed to use the phone for 15 minutes.

So, Evgenia decided, the couple’s children, the oldest of whom is a teenager, would get five minutes each. Her turn would have to wait. Who knows for how long?