According to opposition figure Vladimir Kara-Mursa, who was imprisoned there for years, there are more political prisoners in Russia today than in the entire Soviet Union at the end of the Soviet era.
“There are more than 1,300 known political prisoners in Putin’s Russia, far more than in the entire Soviet Union in recent years,” Kara-Mursa warned Monday at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg.
Regarding the situation of political prisoners in Russia, Kara-Mursa continued to address Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado on the occasion of the awarding of the Vaclav Havel Prize: “The free world knows that the real criminals are those in the Kremlin who took the initiative have had a war in Ukraine, not those who are in prison for opposing him.”
The Kremlin is deceiving Putin supporters
It is a “propaganda lie by Putin that all Russians support his regime and his war,” Kara-Mursa continued. He called for action to free the imprisoned dissidents: “We must continue to fight for their release and for the release of all unjustly imprisoned people in the world.”
Kara-Mursa is one of the most prominent critics of Russian President Vladimir Putin and himself received the Havel Prize in 2022. The prize, named after the Czech ex-president and former anti-communist dissident, writer and playwright Vaclav Havel, who died in 2013, honors representatives of civil society who are particularly committed to human rights in Europe or beyond.
Accused Russia of “war crimes”.
Russian authorities arrested Kara-Mursa, now 43, in April 2022 after he accused Russia of “war crimes” against Ukraine. In April 2023, he was sentenced to 25 years in prison. He was released in early August as part of a prisoner exchange.
Source: Krone
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