[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 126 (Thursday, July 28, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3763-S3765]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Vladimir Kara-Murza
Mr. WICKER. Mr. President, I rise this afternoon to make sure that
the plight of Russian leader Vladimir Kara-Murza is not forgotten, that
the outrageous imprisonment of Vladimir Kara-Murza by the Russian
dictator Vladimir Putin is not forgotten.
We remember three decades ago what hope we had for a new Russia.
Russia had entered a new age of possibility some three decades ago.
After more than 70 years of communist repression, the Soviet order had
collapsed, and with it, the Iron Curtain that kept freedom away from
millions was torn down.
As the red flags came down in Moscow, the free world watched with
anticipation, hoping that democracy and the rule of law might finally
take root in a free Russia. Regrettably, that has not happened. Instead
of democracy and freedom, the Russian people got Vladimir Putin, a man
who has used his office to murder, imprison, and force into exile
anyone who threatens his grip on power, all the while enriching himself
beyond anyone's wildest imagination while ordinary Russians, especially
out in the countryside of Russia, live in squalid conditions.
One of his latest victims is Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Russian patriot
and a friend I had the privilege of hosting in my office just 4 months
ago. As a matter of fact, I have hosted him several times.
Today, Vladimir Kara-Murza spends his days in a prison cell, where
the only thing he can see through the window is a barbed wire fence.
What was his crime? He simply spoke the truth about Putin's war on
Ukraine. His trial--if it can even be called a trial--was held in
secret. No journalists, no diplomats, or spectators of any kind were
allowed to be there. And for his offense of talking about the Russian
war against Ukraine, he now faces up to 15 years in prison.
This is not the first time the Russian dictator has tried to silence
him. Mr. Kara-Murza has been poisoned twice--in 2015 and 2017--and
almost died in both cases. Since then, his wife and three children have
had to live abroad, although he himself has chosen to spend most of his
time in Russia.
In a recent interview with National Review, his wife Evgenia
explained why he insists on working in Russia:
He believes that he would not have the moral right to call
on people to fight if he were not sharing the same risks.
As Mr. Kara-Murza put it in a recent CNN interview the day of his
arrest, he said:
The biggest gift we could give the Kremlin . . . would be
to just give up and run, and that's all they want from us.
What a contrast in character to the man currently running the
Kremlin.
The National Review story goes on to describe Mr. Kara-Murza's
courageous work for democracy through the eyes of his wife Evgenia, as
well as the costs that he and his family have endured, along with so
many other Russian dissidents.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent at this point to have printed
in the Record the National Review story that I referred to.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[From the National Review, May 31, 2022]
In Dark Times, a Brave Man
(By Jay Nordlinger)
On March 15, Vladimir Kara-Murza gave a speech to the
Arizona legislature. ``These are very dark times in Russia,''
he said. ``These are times when we have hundreds of political
prisoners, and that number is only going to grow.'' Less than
a month later, Kara-Murza himself became a political
prisoner.
Born in 1981, he is one of the most prominent opposition
figures in Russia. (Given the state of things, we should
probably return to the word ``dissidents.'') He is a
politician, journalist, and activist. A proponent of
democracy. For 15 years, he worked alongside Boris Nemtsov,
the opposition leader. They became the closest of friends.
Nemtsov was godfather to one of Kara-Murza's children. (``In
Russia,'' Kara-Murza once told me, ``that makes you
family.'')
Together, they worked for passage of the Magnitsky Act in
the U.S. Congress. This is the act that allows the government
to sanction individual human-rights abusers rather than whole
peoples or societies. Nemtsov and Kara-Murza were sitting in
the gallery on November 16, 2012, when the House passed the
act. Nemtsov commented, ``This is the most pro-Russian law
ever enacted by a foreign government.'' At last, the
persecutors of Russians would face consequences.
On February 27, 2015, Boris Nemtsov was murdered--gunned
down within sight of the Kremlin. This had a deep impact on
the Russian democracy movement, and it had a deep impact on
Vladimir Kara-Murza, personally. He told me, ``My life is
divided into before and after February 27, 2015.''
His wife, Evgenia, confirms the importance of Nemtsov's
murder to her husband. ``He will never come to terms with it.
I just know him all too well. Boris Nemtsov was his teacher,
his mentor, and then he became his close friend.'' Plus, ``he
was family.''
Three months after Nemtsov's murder, Vladimir Kara-Murza
himself was nearly murdered. He was subject to a poison
attack, of the kind for which Vladimir Putin's agents have
become infamous. After he recovered, Kara-Murza kept working,
not scared off. Approximately two years later--in February
2017--he was again almost murdered. Again in a poison attack.
On the floor of the U.S. Senate, John McCain made a
statement about Kara-Murza, a friend: ``Vladimir has once
again paid the price for his gallantry and integrity, for
placing the interests of the Russian people above his own
interest.'' Congressman Ed Royce, then the chairman of the
House Foreign Affairs Committee, called Kara-Murza ``one of
the bravest people I know.''
For the record, lots of people have called Kara-Murza ``one
of the bravest people I know.'' Also for the record: McCain
asked Kara-Murza to serve as a pallbearer at his funeral,
which he did, when the time came (September 2018).
After the second poison attack, doctors told Kara-Murza,
``If there's a third one, you won't survive it.''
Last year, a team of independent investigators was able to
identify the exact unit of the Russian secret police that
poisoned Kara-Murza--and Alexei Navalny and others. (Navalny
is the current Russian opposition leader, and also a
political prisoner.) The investigators pinpointed the agents
who carried out the attacks.
Wrote Kara-Murza, ``My emotions are difficult to express
with words. It's one thing to know intellectually that
someone has tried to kill you--and it's quite another to see
the names and photographs of the actual people who did
this.''
For some years, Evgenia Kara-Murza and the couple's
children have lived abroad. ``Obviously, it's not an ideal
situation,'' Vladimir told me in 2017, ``but it has to be
this way. I go back and forth, but I spend most of my time in
Russia.'' He was willing to put his own neck on the line, but
he was not willing to do the same with his family's.
Many people asked him, or pleaded with him, to work in the
West, rather than in Russia itself. That way, he would be
safer, if not entirely shielded from danger. Nemtsov was
dead. Kara-Murza almost died, twice. Wasn't this enough?
Hadn't he paid his dues, so to speak? Did he really need to
be on Russian soil, making it easier for Putin's men? Kara-
Murza rejected all entreaties, saying that he belonged in
Russia.
``What does Evgenia think of all this?'' I asked him in
2017. He answered, ``If you ask her, she'll say, `I knew what
I was signing up for.' '' Then, with a hint of a blush, he
said, ``I'm grateful to have such a woman in my life.''
Today, Evgenia tells me the following: ``When we were
dating, 20 years ago, I was looking at him and thinking, `You
know, I can imagine spending my life with this man. He's
smart, he's funny, he's honorable. He has so much integrity.'
Later, when the poisonings and persecutions began, I thought,
`I wish our lives could be a little more boring.' But I do
admire Vladimir. I've always admired and respected him for
his principled stand, and I would never have him any
different.''
Explaining Vladimir's insistence on working in Russia,
Evgenia says, ``He believes that he would not have the moral
right to call on people to fight if he were not sharing the
same risks.''
Back in 2017, I asked Vladimir whether his name would
protect him. He was a friend of U.S. politicians, he had been
featured on 60 Minutes, he had spoken at forums around the
world. He was a bit of a celebrity. Kara-Murza looked at me
and said, in effect, ``Are
[[Page S3764]]
you kidding?'' Then he said (I will quote directly), ``If
they can kill the leader of the opposition on the bridge next
to the Kremlin''--he was speaking of the Nemtsov murder--
``they can do anything.''
Vladimir Putin launched his all-out assault on Ukraine on
February 24 of this year. Kara-Murza, naturally, cried
against this assault. On March 15, he gave his speech to the
Arizona legislature. On April 11, he appeared on CNN, from
Moscow. He spoke of the Putin regime's history of murder.
Mincing no words, he said, ``This regime that is in power in
our country today--it's not just corrupt, it's not just
kleptocratic, it's not just authoritarian. It is a regime of
murderers. And it is important to say it out loud.''
He went on to say, ``It's tragic, frankly, that it took a
large-scale war in Europe for most Western leaders to finally
open their eyes to the true nature of this regime.''
His interviewer asked him about being in Russia, after all
that had happened to him, and others. Wasn't he afraid of
being killed? Kara-Murza answered, ``Look, I'm a Russian
politician, I have to be in Russia, it's my home country. I
think the biggest gift we could give to the Kremlin--those
of us who are in opposition--would be to just give up and
run, and that's all they want from us.''
He was arrested that night. Five or six agents rushed at
him when he was returning to his apartment building and
parking his car. They dragged him into a van and took him to
a police station. He was denied the right to call a lawyer.
The next day, the authorities sentenced him to 15 days in
prison for resisting arrest (something Kara-Murza had not
done). It is typical for the government to sentence a
dissident to 15 days on some little charge, while they cook
up a bigger charge. Agents took Kara-Murza to a detention
center.
Eventually, he did have lawyers, and very good ones: Vadim
Prokhorov and Olga Mikhailova. (The latter is also lawyer to
Navalny.) Kara-Murza does not have access to a phone or the
Internet or anything like that. But, in detention, he was
able to dictate a column to one of his lawyers.
On this matter of resisting arrest, Kara-Murza said the
following:
Sofia Kalistratova, the legendary Moscow lawyer who
defended dissidents in the ``anti-Soviet'' trials of the
1960s and 1970s, told her charges: ``Everyone else may cross
the street on a red light, but you must always cross on
green.'' She knew that her clients couldn't give the
authorities the slightest excuse to accuse them of breaking
the law.
I have always tried to follow this principle.
In the column he dictated, Kara-Murza also reported a very
interesting detail. When agents brought him to the detention
center, they rang the doorbell and said to the person
opening, ``Here's a political for you. They should have
called you from headquarters.'' (By ``a political,'' they
meant a political prisoner, not a common criminal.)
``Among the inmates in the special detention center,'' said
KaraMurza in his column, ``are a young man and woman who had
staged a protest in response to the murders in Bucha,
Ukraine.'' Also, there were ``students of the Higher School
of Economics who were detained for an antiwar
demonstration.''
Altogether, some 15,000 Russians have been detained for
protesting the assault on Ukraine. These people have assumed
great risks and have exhibited notable bravery. In a column
before his arrest, Kara-Murza recalled the seven people who
protested in Red Square against Moscow's invasion of
Czechoslovakia in August 1968. (Horrible things happened to
them, naturally.) The Kremlin of the time was saying that the
whole nation supported the invasion. One of the protesters,
Natalia Gorbanevskaya, a poet, reflected on those days, many
years later.
``A nation minus me,'' she said, ``is not an entire nation.
A nation minus ten, a hundred, a thousand people is not an
entire nation.'' So, thanks to the Red Square protest, the
government ``could no longer say that there was nationwide
approval for the invasion of Czechoslovakia.''
On April 22, when Kara-Murza had been in prison for a week
and a half, the authorities lodged their bigger charge
against him. They accused him of violating a new law,
instituted on March 5. This law essentially criminalizes any
criticism of the Ukraine war whatsoever. It is punishable by
up to 15 years in prison.
Before the war, there were a few independent media outlets
left in Russia--the venerable radio station Echo of Moscow,
for example, and the venerable newspaper Novaya Gazeta. (Over
the years, six of the paper's correspondents have been
murdered.) Now all independent media have been shut down.
Social media have been blocked. In another of his pre-arrest
columns, Kara-Murza wrote, ``Near-total darkness has
descended on Russia's information space with frightening
speed.''
The first person charged under the new law--the March 5
law--was a blogger, Veronika Belotserkovskaya, who does not
live in Russia, but in France. Her response: ``I was
officially recognized as a decent person!'' In Kara-Murza's
case, the authorities cited the Arizona speech in particular.
As of this writing, he is awaiting a court date.
Earlier this year, I talked with Kara-Murza about what
seemed to me the increasing, galloping re-Sovietization of
Russia. The government had shut down Memorial--the leading
civil-society organization in the country. Memorial was
founded at the urging of Andrei Sakharov in the late 1980s.
Sakharov--the great scientist and dissident--was its first
chairman. The purpose of the group was to uncover and tell
the truth about the past, and to promote freedom and
democracy in the present.
As Kara-Murza pointed out to me, plenty of Soviet men are
in the Russian government now--starting with the KGB colonel
at the top. Who wants to be reminded of his past crimes? Or
his present ones?
In Russia's supreme court last December, the chief
prosecutor, Alexei Zhafyarov, said, ``Memorial creates a
false image of the Soviet Union as a terrorist state.'' He
also said that Memorial ``makes us repent of the Soviet past,
instead of remembering glorious history''--and ``probably
because someone is paying for it.''
Over the past eight years--since Putin's initial invasion
of Ukraine--Kara-Murza and I have had several conversations
about just that: Ukraine. Kara-Murza's view is that Putin is
very, very nervous about a democratic example in that
country. It's one thing if New Zealand, let's say, is a
democracy. New Zealand is far away, and, besides, it's
``Anglo.'' But Ukraine? There are many ties between Ukraine
and Russia: cultural, religious, linguistic. Millions of
families have direct ties across the border. And if Russians
see that Ukraine has a decent, open, democratic society . . .
they may demand the same for themselves, which makes Putin
and his men very nervous indeed.
In one of our conversations, Kara-Murza put it this way:
``A successful democratic experiment in Ukraine presents an
existential threat to Vladimir Putin's authoritarian
kleptocracy in Russia.''
It is Kara-Murza's strong belief that Russia, one day, will
be free and democratic. People should avoid ``cultural
condescension,'' he says. That is a phrase he borrows from
Ronald Reagan. In his Westminster speech of 1982, Reagan
said, ``Democracy already flourishes in countries with very
different cultures and historical experiences. It would be
cultural condescension, or worse, to say that any people
prefer dictatorship to democracy.'' Earlier this year, Kara-
Murza told me, ``I have absolutely no doubt that one day we
will have a normal, modern, accountable democratic government
in Russia. There's no reason that our nation is destined to
be an outlier in Europe or the world, and to live under the
yoke of a dictatorship.''
At the moment, Vladimir Kara-Murza sits in prison, and
faces many years of it. His friends and allies are making as
much noise as they can. Charles Krauthammer once told me
about something that Meg Greenfield had said to him. She was
the editorial-page editor of the Washington Post. When the
life of Sakharov hung in the balance, she wanted something
about him in her pages at least once a week, she said. That
way, the Post might help keep him alive.
Chief among the shouters, or campaigners, today for Kara-
Murza is his wife. I think of Avital Sharansky, who
campaigned for her husband, Anatoly (later Natan), during his
nine years in the Gulag. She had obtained a visa to go to
Israel, he had not. Sharansky told me a few years ago, ``The
biggest mistake the KGB made was letting Avita I out.''
``I've never been a public person,'' Evgenia Kara-Murza
says, ``and I've never enjoyed being in the public eye. I am
a quite introverted person, so I like working from home, and
I like taking care of the kids, but unfortunately the
situation sometimes changes, and I emerge when my husband is
either poisoned or thrown in jail, because this is my
partner, my soulmate, and I am prepared to do everything I
can to bring my children's father home.''
Mr. WICKER. Mr. Kara-Murza's imprisonment is part of Mr. Putin's
larger assault on what remains of political freedom in Russia. In Mr.
Kara-Murza's words, Putin's regime has gone ``from highly authoritarian
to near-totalitarian almost overnight.''
In March, Russian officials passed a new censorship law forbidding
all criticism of Mr. Putin's war in Ukraine. That law has been the
basis for more 16,000 arrests since the war began in February,
including that of Mr. Kara-Murza. Another 2,400 Russians have been
charged with administrative offenses for speaking out against the war.
Meanwhile, Putin's propaganda machine is ramping up. Independent
Russian media outlets have all but vanished, having been blocked, shut
down, or forced out of the country by the Kremlin.
The last embers of freedom in Russia are going cold. Putin's
crackdown on domestic freedom began in 2003, when Mikhail Khodorkovsky
was arrested on trumped-up charges of tax fraud after he simply
criticized the government. A former member of the elite, Mr.
Khodorkovsky had successfully led the Yukos Oil Company through
privatization after the Iron Curtain fell. And contrary to the
Kremlin's claims, the company consistently paid its taxes. But that
didn't stop Vladimir Putin from plundering its assets and throwing Mr.
Khodorkovsky in jail, where he stayed for 10 years.
I would note that just before his arrest, Mr. Khodorkovsky displayed
the
[[Page S3765]]
same courage and patriotism that we now see in Vladimir Kara-Murza.
Like Mr. Kara-Murza, he knew very well he could go to jail for speaking
out against the government, but Mr. Khodorkovsky did so anyway and
refused to flee the country, saying:
I would prefer to be a political prisoner rather than a
political immigrant.
Of course, by then, Mr. Putin had already shown himself willing to
violate the international laws of war, having leveled the Chechen
capital of Grozny in his own Republic of Russia in 1999. In 2008, he
launched a new assault on international law with the invasion of
Georgia. In 2014, he started a bloody war in eastern Ukraine. In 2016,
Russian dictator Putin and his forces attacked the Syrian city of
Aleppo, killing hundreds of civilians and prolonging the rule of Bashar
al-Assad.
Meanwhile, Putin ramped up his attacks on domestic freedom as well.
In 2015, Boris Nemtsov, leader of the democratic opposition, former
Deputy Prime Minister of Russia, was shot to death in broad daylight
just yards away from the Kremlin. Three months later, Mr. Kara-Murza
was poisoned for the first time. More recently, in 2020, Alexei
Navalny, the current leader of the opposition, was himself poisoned and
had to seek treatment in Berlin. This is Vladimir Putin's Russia today.
When Navalny recovered, he chose to return to Moscow, knowing the
risks, and immediately upon landing, he was arrested.
This is the deplorable state of Russia and freedom under Vladimir
Putin. Time and again, he has shown that he is bent on stamping out the
aspirations of his people for freedom and the rule of law.
As leader of the free world, America must continue to condemn Putin's
lawless acts and stand in solidarity with our Russian friends who are
courageously fighting against all odds for a better future in Russia
and are suffering as a result.
These are modern-day heroes--Alexei Navalny, Vladimir Kara-Murza--and
we should not forget them.
My friend the distinguished senior Senator from Maryland, Mr. Cardin,
and I, along with Congressmen Steve Cohen and Joe Wilson, are the
four House and Senate leaders of the Helsinki Commission, which
monitors human rights in former Soviet countries. We recently sent a
joint letter to President Biden calling on the administration to name
and sanction all of those who have been involved in the arrest,
detention, and persecution of Vladimir Kara-Murza. I issue that call
again today, and I invite my colleagues from both parties to stand with
Vladimir Kara-Murza and work for his release.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Hawaii.
Ms. HIRONO. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to be able to
complete my remarks.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.