Russian prosecutors seek 25 years in prison for opposition politician Vladimir Kara-Murza

(Patria) - Russian prosecutors have requested a 25-year prison sentence for opposition politician Vladimir Kara-Murza, who is on trial in a closed court on various charges, including treason, his lawyer said, Reuters reports.

The 41-year-old is one of the few prominent opposition figures who have remained in Russia and continued to speak out against President Vladimir Putin after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

Kara-Murza was arrested a year ago, accused of spreading false information about the armed forces and declared a "foreign agent," a term with connotations of espionage that Russian authorities have applied to numerous activists and journalists. Hours earlier, CNN broadcast an interview with him in which he called Russia a "murderous regime."

In October, his lawyer said he was also being investigated for treason, which alone carries a maximum prison sentence of 20 years, in connection with three public speeches. These included an address to the Arizona House of Representatives in which he said Putin was bombing Ukrainian homes, hospitals, and schools.

Kara-Murza is also accused of involvement with an "undesirable organization" due to his alleged ties to two foreign opposition forums.

In a statement on March 13, he said he would fight all charges, saying they were based on "political revenge." He compared their wording to that used by Stalin's secret police, the NKVD, in the 1930s, when Kara-Murza's grandfather was sent to a Gulag labor camp.

Kara-Murza holds British and Russian citizenship. He was a close associate of Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, who was murdered in central Moscow in 2015.

Kara-Murza's lawyer, Maria Eismont, told reporters, in comments broadcast by the online outlet SOTA, that the trial had entered its final phase faster than expected. She was quoted as saying that he had lost more than 17 kg in detention.

Kara-Murza's lawyers had previously said he suffers from polyneuropathy, a nerve disorder resulting from two alleged poisonings that caused him to fall into a coma in 2015 and 2017. Russian authorities have denied his claims that security services were responsible for both incidents, Reuters recalls.

Also known in our region

Kara-Murza has also been known to the regional public since the beginning of last year when, in an interview with the daily newspaper "Nova", he accused the then Serbian Minister of Police, Aleksandar Vulin, of handing over transcripts of his Belgrade conversations to Moscow.

Kara-Murza claimed he was followed at every step during his stay in Belgrade.

Vulin said at the time that it was a "lie" and that Kara-Murza would have to prove his claims in the courts of Serbia and Russia.