Vladimir Kara-Murza, an opposition activist, was given a 25-year prison term in Russia for offenses related to his criticism of the war in Ukraine.
Treason, spreading “false” information about the Russian military, and membership in a “undesirable organization” were all deemed to be charges against him.
The ex-politician and journalist who is Russian-British is the most recent in a long line of Putin critics who have either been detained or forced to leave Russia.
He has refuted every accusation.
Along with criticizing the conflict in Ukraine, Mr. Kara-Murza, 41, has spent years speaking out against Russian President Vladimir Putin. He has also criticized the government’s assault on dissent.
The maximum requested by prosecutors, Mr. Kara-Murza’s 25-year sentence has drawn widespread condemnation. It is the harshest sentence an opposition leader has gotten since the start of the Ukrainian conflict.
The judge made his decision in a matter of minutes, in contrast to the frequently lengthy delays encountered in Russian courts while delivering judgments and announcing sentencing.
According to the judge, Mr. Kara-Murza will serve his sentence in a “strict regime correctional colony” and be fined 400,000 roubles ($4,900; £4,000).
Mr. Kara-Murza is descended from a prominent family of Soviet dissidents. Vladimir Sr., his father, was also an opponent of the Kremlin.
When he traveled to the UK as a teenager with his mother and enrolled in Cambridge University, he obtained British citizenship.
Before serving as Boris Nemtsov’s counsel, a prominent Russian opposition leader, and politician who was assassinated in Moscow in 2015, he began his career as a journalist.
Mr. Kara-Murza participated in the Magnitsky Act’s passage in the US, an important piece of legislation that enabled the implementation of penalties against Russian human rights violators.
After being poisoned, he relocated to the US with his family to rehabilitate and came close to dying twice. After the invasion of Ukraine, he eventually went back to Russia but refused to leave again, despite the rising danger for people who were against the regime.
