Championing a Russia of the People, Not of Putin

Vladimir Kara-Murza is the deputy chairman of Open Russia, a pro-democracy group founded by exiled former oligarch Mikhail Khodorskovsky. He also is chairman of the Boris Nemtsov Foundation for Freedom, which is named after the Russian opposition figure who was shot to death near the Kremlin in 2015. Kara-Murza has taken his criticism of Vladimir Putin's government before the U.S. Senate and he recently served as one of the pallbearers at the funeral of U.S. Sen. John McCain. Russian state media have labeled him a traitor for his democratic lobbying efforts in the West. In 2015 and again in 2017, Kara-Murza was hospitalized with life-threatening symptoms that he says his doctors diagnosed as poisoning.

This interview with Kara-Murza was conducted on Sept. 29, three weeks after regional elections saw a record four gubernatorial candidates with the ruling United Russia party forced into runoffs with opposition candidates. United Russia has since lost two of the runoff elections and pulled out of a third; the fourth is in December.