A leading pro-democracy campaigner and Kremlin critic has been sentenced to 25 years in a Russian penal colony for condemning the war in Ukraine after a show trial that has been compared with the most brutal excesses of the Stalin era.
Opposition activist Vladimir Kara-Murza, who holds dual British and Russian citizenship and has survived two poisonings by the authorities, was deemed guilty of treason after accusing Russian military forces of war crimes in a speech to US politicians last year.
The sentence is the longest yet handed out to a Russian opposition figure, and marks another sinister step in Vladimir Putin‘s crackdown on dissent following his bungled invasion of Ukraine.
Human rights lawyer Mikhail Biryukov compared the spectacle to Joseph Stalin’s show trials, adding that such a long sentence for treason was similar to those handed to ‘Nazi accomplices who fought with weapons in their hands during the Second World War’.
Opposition activist Vladimir Kara-Murza…
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