Twice-Poisoned Putin Critic Arrested. His Wife Speaks Out

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Russians protesting Putin’s invasion face harsh consequences, including the opposition leader Vladimir Kara-Murza, who was detained by police last week as he was preparing to be interviewed by our own Walter Isaacson. Walter now speaks with his wife, Evgenia Kara-Murza, about her husband’s continued struggle against Putin, even from behind bars.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WALTER ISAACSON, CORRESPONDENT: Thank you, Christiane. And, Evgenia Kara-Murza, welcome to the show.

EVGENIA KARA-MURZA, WIFE OF VLADIMIR KARA-MURZA: Thank you very much for giving me this opportunity to speak out on behalf of my husband. And my husband has been speaking out on behalf of so many oppressed Russians for so many years. So it’s very important for me to be here to be able to speak out on his behalf now that he cannot do it on his own.

ISAACSON: We were sitting here just a week ago preparing to interview your husband, the great Russian opposition leader. And, suddenly, we got word that he had been detained. And we were just sitting here waiting for the show to begin, and he got arrested. Tell me what happened.

KARA-MURZA: Well, he’s — he was in Moscow, and still is, obviously. He had just driven home in his car to his home in Moscow. He parked his car. And he hadn’t even had a chance to get out of it when he saw five policemen running to his car. They asked him to get out of the vehicle. He asked them in return to identify themselves. They refused to do that. They refused his right to call his lawyer. They refused his request to call his family to let us know that he was OK. He was dragged to a police van that was stationed nearby and taken to a police department in Moscow, one of the police departments in Moscow, over the Khamovniki. He was held there overnight with no access to his lawyer. He was given one phone call. He called me and let me know under which article he was being told. Charges against him were absolutely ridiculous. The official police report said that he had behaved erratically on seeing police officers, that he had changed the trajectory of his movement, quickened his pace and trying to (AUDIO GAP) Well, he couldn’t have done any of those things because he was sitting in his car. He was not even on his feet to have done any of those things. But this is an article under which you can be sent to jail right away for up to 15 days, which they did. They tried him the next day. Thankfully, his lawyer was present. But, still, they tried him. That court session took only about half-an-hour to 45 minutes. Everything was settled and done. And he was sent to jail for 15 days.

ISAACSON: On the morning he was arrested or right before he was arrested, he was on CNN. And he called Putin’s government a regime of murderers. Do you think that’s the real cause that he got arrested for?

KARA-MURZA: My husband has been very outspoken, fiercely outspoken against this regime’s atrocities, against this regime’s crimes for years and years and years, because, with Russian society, Putin has been persecuting and killing, imprisoning his opponents for years. Even when we talk about Ukraine, this war didn’t really start two months ago. It began in 2014, when Putin invaded Crimea. It’s just then he didn’t receive any strong response from the West to his actions, and he felt emboldened, and he decided, well, I can go further. I can just invade the entire country. My husband has been very outspoken. He has been advocating for the introduction of targeted sanctions against murderers and thieves in the Putin regime since 2010. His close friend and colleague Boris Nemtsov paid the ultimate prize for his advocacy. He was killed. He was shot on the Bolshoy Moskvoretsky Bridge in Moscow in 2015. My husband was poisoned for the first time only two months after Boris Nemtsov’s murder. And he was poisoned again in 2017. And thanks to this amazing independent investigation by Bellingcat and “Insider” and BBC, we now know the names of the people from the FSB team who had been following him, the same FSB team that followed Alexey Navalny before his poisoning. And we know…

(CROSSTALK)

ISAACSON: Now, you’re talking about the Russian secret police.

KARA-MURZA: Absolutely.

ISAACSON: And you’re sure that they’re the ones who poisoned your husband?

KARA-MURZA: Absolutely. We now know the names of those people who tried to kill my husband twice. And when he got up, when he was able to walk after his second poisoning, he took his cane and went back to Moscow again. And since the beginning of the war, my husband has been fiercely opposing it and fiercely protesting it, raising this absolute atrocity of the war against our closest neighbors on every platform he was able to reach. And, yes, I believe in Russia, nowadays, you can get sent to prison for up to 15 years for calling this war a war. So there is no surprise that my husband was detained.

ISAACSON: He’s supposed to be in jail only 15 days, not 15 years, which means he would get out next week. Are you hopeful that he will get out next week? Or do you think they’re going to continue to hold him?

KARA-MURZA: Under Putin’s regime, we never know what we might expect. And we cannot be sure that Vladimir will be released next week. We have to remember that over 15,000 people have been arrested in Russia since the beginning of Putin’s hostilities in Ukraine. These are people who go out in the streets protesting against the war, despite all odds and despite these restrictive measures and these laws that can send you to prison for up to 15 years. And the stories I’m getting from everywhere are amazing in their absurdity, in — they’re just unimaginable. A young girl was arrested for holding a blank sheet of paper. Another — young Russian artist from Saint Petersburg was arrested for switching price tags at a local supermarket with the anti- war messages. Two people, one in Ufa and one in Moscow, were arrested for holding silent peaceful actions with a copy of Leo Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” in the streets. In Khabarovsk, a man was just arrested very recently. He came out with a slogan, “I’m not afraid.” A few people who gathered around him started chanting: “We’re not afraid. We’re not afraid.” They got all arrested and taken to police detention centers. Hundreds of people are now serving unlawful jail sentences all across Russia for their opposition to this war.

ISAACSON: Your husband is in jail in Moscow, and is allowed one phone call every day. How are his conditions? What does he say when he calls?

KARA-MURZA: Well, I’m very thankful to have this one call from him on a daily basis. I never know when the call might come. it might come at 4:00 a.m., or it might come at 9:00 a.m. He never knows when he’s going to be allowed to make that phone call. My husband is a very optimistic man. He keeps in good spirits. He never loses his faith that we will prevail, even if it’s going to be harder than we could ever have imagined. He keeps working from jail, from behind the bars. “The Washington Post” just published his article just a little while ago that he wrote in prison and passed through his lawyer.

ISAACSON: The very last line of that article, if I may say, is a very strong one. He wrote: “I have never been so sure that Russia will be free.” Why is he so sure of that? Why are you sure of that?

KARA-MURZA: Because we know that, despite everything, protests continue. Even there — so, even if there’s solitary, even if persecutions are getting this absolutely massive scale, they’re still going on, and because Vladimir, in this very article he wrote himself, there are a couple of people in the next cell who got arrested for graffiti, anti-war graffiti. Another person got arrested for opposing the war and is serving his jail sentence in the same detention center. So — and that’s just one detention center in Moscow and they’re just the people that my husband got a chance to meet. Imagine how many detention centers are now full of such protesters all across the country. This is why we’re hopeful that we will prevail, somehow we will. The good has to prevail over the evil if there is no other way. So many Russians had to leave Russia fleeing Vladimir Putin’s persecutions because they were afraid for their lives, for their safety, for the lives of the children. And they continue opposing the war from outside. They’re just regular Russians who help Ukrainian refugees in Poland, in Hungary, in Germany. There are important Russian-led initiatives, for example, the anti-war committee that my husband’s in is this — this Anti-War Committee was founded by a group of prominent Russian opposition figures, like Mikhail Khodorkovsky, like leading economists Sergei Guriev, Sergei Aleksashenko, a well-known Russian writer Viktor Shenderovich, ex-world chess champion Garry Kasparov.

ISAACSON: Your husband is the only one of that group in Russia, staying in Russia as much as possible. He’s been poisoned twice, and yet he keeps going back. And you go back and visit him, especially after he was poisoned. What — why does he do that? Why does he insist on staying in Moscow, when the other people have left?

KARA-MURZA: Because he believes that this would be the biggest gift for the Russian regime, for the Russian government if he just fled, because he believes that, as a Russian politician, he has to be where his people is fighting against this evil regime, and because I think actually wants to show by his own example that people should not be afraid. This is not a moment to be afraid, even if it’s very scary. We have to somehow push through our fears, because of the atrocities Putin’s regime is committing in Ukraine, because of the atrocities Putin’s regime is committing against his own people, because we need to continue fighting. Otherwise, everything that still is alive and breathing in Russia will be squashed and be destroyed. And he cannot — he cannot allow that. He loves his country. He’s a true patriot.

ISAACSON: You have told us about the stories of people now who have been protesting. Your husband’s in jail with people who have been protesting. Yet we also hear that maybe 80 percent of the Russian people support Putin and support the invasion. Is that because it’s ridiculous for us to put any stock in polls done in an authoritarian regime or is it because he has such control of the propaganda that people are supporting him in Russia?

KARA-MURZA: This is a rather difficult question. First, yes, I want to say, you should not trust opinion polls conducted in a totally utilitarian state because this is what Russia has become over the past two months. Imagine a situation when you live in the country where there is no independent justice system, where no independent medias. You’re not protected, your rights are not protected in any way. And you are approached by someone in the street, and this person asks you, do you support Putin’s regime? Do you support President Putin’s special operation in Ukraine? What are you going to say? Do you think that you have all the parents that you need to take care of, you have young children that you need to raise and you need to feed? Yes, you might be afraid to speak out. Some people just walk by without answering the question. Others will just say, yes, we do support it, and walk by again. And other people who say, yes, we do support the special operation in Ukraine, well, many of those people do not really understand what’s happening. Putin has started this propaganda war when he came to power, and it took him 22 years to win this war. Now, we have nothing left in terms of opposition independent objective media outlets.

ISAACSON: Your husband and yourself have been very strongly in favor of sanctions. Now, there have been pretty strict sanctions put on place. To what extent do you know if it’s hurting the average Russian and to what extent do you think it’s hurting the Russian economy?

KARA-MURZA: My husband has been advocating for targeted sanctions against thieves and murderers in Putin’s regime since 2010. (INAUDIBLE) was adopted in 2012, then became the Global Minitzkilo (ph), and this is really evolutionary. This is a major legislation. But unfortunately —

ISAACSON: And the legislation put sanctions on oligarchs because —

KARA-MURZA: Absolutely.

ISAACSON: — Bill Browder and your husband did it in honor of a lawyer who was killed, right?

KARA-MURZA: Absolutely. And after Boris Nemtsov’s murder, my husband continued working closely with William Browder to push for more sanctions. Unfortunately, they started sanctions, the majority of them came only after the war broke out, and it is tragic that it has taken the rest of the world over 22 years and a bloody war in the middle of Europe to realize what this regime actually brings to the world, that they cannot treat Mr. Putin as a partner, that they can to the reset relations with him, that they have to actually push back and fight him. And, well, had these targeted sanctions been introduced by five, seven, maybe 10 years ago, this war would never have happened. Of this, I am convinced. And now, we need more sanctions, and these sanctions will be more massive. They affect the entire Russian economy. And, yes, when Mr. Putin is finally in jail, when he’s serving — when he finally stands trial for all the war crimes that he has already committed in Ukraine, and that he’s committing against his own population in Russia, when his fleet is finally imprisoned for a very long time, I hope, Russia will be left in ruins. We cannot forget about that Mr. Putin is not erasing Ukraine — not just Ukraine from the face of the earth, he’s also destroying Russia. The country will be in ruins and we will have to rebuild everything from scratch. And I know that my husband will be one of those people who will be very much involved in this work of rebuilding.

ISAACSON: We hear reports that people are taking pictures of the dead Russian soldiers, their faces and sending them back to Russia, and they’re getting back to the mothers of these soldiers. Tell us the power you think that the mothers in Russia might be having now?

KARA-MURZA: I cannot imagine the pain. I cannot imagine the misery. It’s absolutely — even these thoughts are absolutely (INAUDIBLE) and so many people are dying for no reason at all. This war should never have happened. And as a mother, I think I’m already trying to do my little part in speaking out against this war and in stopping it as soon as possible. I cannot imagine the pain these women must feel. I cannot imagine the pain Ukrainian parents are feeling when they lose their children, when they lose — it’s absolutely heartbreaking. You know, this is — I’m sorry for being so emotional, but this is something that should never have happened. I wake up with the news from Ukraine. I go to bed with the news from Ukraine, and there’s just — there are just tears, tears and this rage that we feel inside. This should not be happening.

ISAACSON: Evgenia Kara-Murza, thank you so much for joining us.

KARA-MURZA: Thank you for having me here.