Russian political activist Vladimir Kara-Murza called it “a miracle” that he was freed from a Russian prison in an unprecedented prisoner exchange this summer, and he said it should encourage ongoing efforts to free Americans detained abroad.
“You are the reason that I’m standing here,” Kara-Murza told members of Congress, the Biden administration and supporters in a packed room at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday.
“You are the reason that 16 people, 16 human souls were saved from the hell of Putin’s gulag, in that exchange last month.”
Kara-Murza was released from prison on Aug. 1 as part of a wide-ranging deal where the U.S. and European partners exchanged eight Russian prisoners for 16 people jailed in Russia, including Americans and Russians opposed to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government.
The activist has long been a target of Putin’s crackdown on political opposition, having survived two poisoning attempts in 2015 and 2017 in Moscow. He was arrested in 2022 for speaking out against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and sentenced to 25 years in prison.
“Whatever the cynics and the skeptics will tell you, advocacy works and public attention protects and public attention saves,” he said Tuesday.
Kara-Murza, who spent most of his two years in jail in solitary confinement, said he had one bright spot in his days, in the afternoon, when he would receive letters from supporters, among them fellow dissidents in Russia.
“People who took time and who were not afraid to register their names, their addresses, their bank accounts — in this official prison correspondence system — writing to me and expressing how they felt. … That’s an act of courage in itself in such a rigid dictatorship as our country has lived under for the past quarter of a century,” he said.
“I have absolutely no doubt that that day — where we will see a free, peaceful and democratic Russia — will come, and I very much look forward to working together with all of you in this room and outside to bring that day just a little bit closer.”
The event served to raise awareness of the plight of approximately 700 to 1,300 Russian prisoners of conscience, as well as thousands of political prisoners in Belarus and jailed political dissidents around the world.
“The only way that I can think of it is as a miracle, because I was certain I would die in that Siberian prison. But now that I have been saved from there, every morning I wake up and every night I go to bed thinking about all those who are still left in Russia’s modern-day gulag, back in Putin’s prisons,” Kara-Murza continued.
“And I’m not going to relent, to stop until we get the others out too. And I hope we can continue working together with you to speak out, to advocate and to help rescue and help save all the people who are still left behind.”
Kara-Murza was one of the driving forces behind the U.S. Magnitsky Act, a federal law that allows the U.S. to freeze assets and ban travel for those found responsible for gross human rights violations. Originally targeting Russian human rights violators, the authority expanded to target violators of human rights around the world.
The law was named in memory of Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian tax lawyer who investigated $230 million in fraud by the Russian government and died in a Russian prison in 2009 while subject to physical and psychological pressure. The Magnitsky Act was used against people identified as involved in Magnitsky’s detention, abuse, and death.
U.S. officials credit it as one of the strongest tools they have in efforts to free political prisoners around the world.
“Your work on that, I’m sure you didn’t do it as a tool for yourself, but your work on that has helped us enormously,” James O’Brien, assistant secretary of State for European and Eurasian affairs, told Kara-Murza.
The event also served as a personal celebration for close friends of Kara-Murza who have worked alongside him for more than two decades on human rights and defending democracy in Russia, and knew how high the stakes were to save his life.
Kara-Murza’s mentor, Russian opposition politician Boris Nemtsov, was murdered in Moscow in 2015 in a crime with links to the Russian government. And the U.S. was working to free Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny as part of the August swap before he died in a Russian prison in February.
“The first time I ever saw you, you were with this man,” Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) said, holding up a portrait of Nemtsov.
“We lost him to a Putin-backed assassin. We honor you back today on behalf of Boris Nemtsov, and Navalny and Magnitsky and all the people we’ve stood for,” he said.
“I never thought I would see him again alive,” Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told The Hill. He’s worked with Kara-Murza for over 20 years through the U.S. Helsinki Commission, which supports efforts at democracy-building and protecting human rights in post-Soviet Russia.
“It was emotional to see him and he looked so good. … These are days you remember, this is the day that you remember. Here’s a person who was perhaps the most visible dissident of Putin who was released from prison. That’s big news.”