Name: Foreign Affairs Committee
Uploaded: 2026-11-10T13:57:46+00:00
Duration: 6555 s

00:03 - 00:33

Speaker 2

Good afternoon. This is a further session of the committee's inquiry into Russia and the UK's strategy towards Russia. I should convey the apologies of our chairman, Dame Emily Thornberry, who is at the COP meeting in Turkey today. And so, I'm taking her place. And we have two panels, first which we're delighted to welcome Vladimir Kara-Murza.

Perhaps you would like to introduce yourself.

00:33 - 01:31

Speaker 1

Thank you so much, Mr Chairman, members of the committee. Thank you for the kind invitation to appear before you. It is a true privilege. My name is Vladimir Kara-Murza. I'm a Russian opposition politician, author, historian, and former political prisoner.

For many years, I had the honour of working with Boris Nemtsov, who was the leader of the democratic opposition in Russia, and who was assassinated on Vladimir Putin's orders 11 years ago, in February of 2015. I previously served as deputy leader of the People's Freedom Party, an opposition party in Russia. In April of 2022, I was arrested for publicly speaking out against the war in Ukraine, sentenced to 25 years in prison, strict regime penal colony for, quote-unquote, "high treason". This is what they call opposition to the government in Putin's Russia. And the only reason I'm sitting before you today is because, 2 years ago, five democratic nations led by the US and Germany came together to organise what became the largest East-West prisoner exchange since the Cold War, that freed 16 people from Putin's modern-day gulag, and I was one of them.

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