Putin kills his enemies not because he needs to but because he fears them, and because he can.
A British political prisoner in jail in Siberia is almost certain to die there unless freed soon, according to a prominent human rights campaigner.
So what? The chances of a quick release are slim, and Vladimir Kara-Murza would be the latest in a long line of politicians and campaigners to pay the ultimate price for opposing Putin.
Besides being in poor health, he has the “very big misfortune” of being a dual British-Russian citizen, the campaigner and financier Bill Browder says, because Britain has a policy of not negotiating for hostages.
The full Stalin. Kara-Murza is one of at least 700 political prisoners currently held in Russian jails – nearly three times as many as at the end of the Soviet era. All are victims of a system seen to have taken a “totalitarian” turn this year with
- the death of Alexei Navalny in an Arctic labour camp;
- the assassination of the helicopter pilot and defector Maxim Kuzminov in Spain; and
- the installation of Putin in power for six more years after a rigged election.
Navalny’s popular following was one factor that persuaded Putin earlier this year to “go the full Stalin,” says Misha Glenny, rector of the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna and author of McMafia. The other was his war on Ukraine.
Total war. Putin signed spring call-up papers at the weekend for 150,000 fresh Russian conscripts, on top of nearly 600,000 enlisted since the start of the war. The new conscripts are not legally supposed to be sent to the front but will enable others to go in their place. Following Russia’s recent capture of Avdiivka, a new Russian offensive is expected soon along much of the eastern front.
In the meantime…
- Germany refuses to send long-range Taurus missiles to Ukraine.
- $60 billion earmarked for US military aid remains stuck in Congress despite bipartisan support because the House speaker, Mike Johnson, a Trump supporter, refuses to allow members to vote on it.
- The EU has agreed a long-term aid package worth €50 billion, but only a tenth of it is for weapons.
“I think [Putin] is probably sitting in the Kremlin saying things are going pretty well at the moment,” Glenny says.
Total impunity. In these circumstances, Putin agonises much less about whether to sanction the murder of his political prisoners than the West does about their loss. He regards them as mere irritants, says Boris Bondarev, the only Russian diplomat to have resigned and spoken out against the war.
Asked about the long list of Putin’s enemies who have met early and violent deaths, including the journalist Anna Politkovsaya, the ex-FSB agent Alexander Litvinkenko and the opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, Bondarev tells Tortoise: “I think [Putin] wanted to show his power, his capacity to reach to anybody. Maybe because what was the point of being a dictator if you do not abuse your power?”
A regime of murderers. The Cambridge-educated Kara-Murza returned to Russia in 2022 after the invasion of Ukraine having already survived two FSB poisoning attempts and knowing he would be arrested on arrival. Before leaving he gave his assessment of the Putin regime in an interview with CNN:
“It’s not just corrupt. It’s not just kleptocratic. It is a regime of murderers, and it is important to say it out loud. And it’s really tragic that it took a large-scale war in Europe… for most western leaders to finally open their eyes to the true nature of the regime.”
Kara-Murza is now serving a 25-year sentence for “treason”.
What’s more… British appeals for his release have fallen on deaf ears. The foreign office issued a statement yesterday calling his imprisonment politically motivated and “deplorable” and saying he needed urgent medical treatment. Eleven Russian officials and two FSB agents have been sanctioned by the UK for their role in his detention and earlier poisoning.
But there is no talk of a swap – and even if there were, the man Putin most wants returned, a trained assassin named Vadim Krasikov, is in Berlin.
