Jailed opposition politician says Putin's regime is based on “in fear and apathy”

The imprisoned opposition politician, Vladimir Kara-Murza, said in a letter exchange with blogger Anna Yarovaya, that the Russian president's regime, Vladimir Putin, is based <x0.0 automatically in fear and apathy” and will collapse in “the predictable future”.

Kara-Murza, 42-year-old, is serving a 25-year prison sentence on charges of high treason and discrediting the Russian Army involved in the ongoing invasion of Ukraine, which he, his supporters and human rights groups oppose and call politically motivated.

In the letters published on the TV channel by Yourovaya over the weekend, he writes he was shocked by the 16 February news of the death of another leading opposition politician, Alexei Navlany, in a prison in the Arctic, and there was no doubt that Putin was “personally responsible”.

“Since the first second [after hearing the news] I knew for sure that Vladimir Putin was personally responsible for Alexei Navalnyt's death and that a political murder was committed by his order, regardless of whether it was the result of deliberate torture, repeated conditions or poisoning”, Kara-Murza wrote.

He added that he was unaware of how other prisoners reacted to the news, as he is being held alone in a punitive section of prison in the Siberian city of Omsk, and has no contact with other prisoners.

According to him, a trusted politician cannot live abroad, so opposition politicians like him and imprisoned critics of the Kremlin, such as Ilya Yashin, Andrei Pivovarov and Navajo, have no choice but to stay in Russia or return to Russia to challenge authorities.

For a public politician, it's ethical and political responsibility... If you urge people to stand against the authoritarian regime, you cannot do so from a safe distance, you must share the risks with your fellow countrymen”, Kara-Murza wrote.

In a letter, he also wrote that as a historian, he believes that history has its own developmental laws and logic that no one can say <x)

Let's look at the map of Europe just 35 years ago, half the countries there were authoritarian. Today there are only two countries in Europe that are not free, Russia and Belarus. And there is no doubt that these two bets are also temporary”, he stressed.

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Putin's “Regime is based exclusively on fear and apathy. Authorities want Russian society to be divided, depressed, demoralised,” wrote Kara-Murza.

But you remember what Alexei Navajo said... The changes won't come to Russia from outside... Only when Russian society itself stops to tolerate what is happening when it understands its strength, identity, and its responsibility for the future will changes in Russia become inevitable. When this happens, it only depends on us”, it wrote Kara-Murza.

Kara-Murza, who holds Russian and British passports, was first arrested in April 2022 after returning to Russia from abroad and was charged with disobeying a police officer.

He was later charged with discrediting the Russian Army, a charge stemming from Russia's full aggression in 2022 against Ukraine and a push for the Kremlin to eliminate criticism of the subject.

He was later charged with treason for comments he made in speeches outside Russia that criticised Kremlin politics.

In April last year, Kara-Murza was found guilty of all charges and sentenced to 25 years in prison. /Radio Free Europe