April 18
(Translation) :-
In one of my favorite Christmas movies, “What Else Men Talk About”, there is a scene where the hero comes to his own funeral and, hiding under the table, listens to emotional speeches addressed to him. All the past days – after the prosecutor’s request, and now after the verdict of the Moscow City Court – I feel like I am the character from a movie, reading a stream of your letters with such warm, soulful, but as if farewell words.
Friends, thank you for your warmth, solidarity and support – but do not hurry to say goodbye to me 😁 In our country, reality tends to be different from what is written in formal papers. I really love the story that Naum Kleiman, director of the Film Museum, told about his family’s link to Siberia at the end of Stalin’s rule. When the migrants were taken out of the greenhouses into the snow and the curfew began to read the sentence, one woman suddenly began to laugh loudly. Everyone thought she was crazy. And when the commandant left, she approached them and said, “Why are you crying?” If he had said “ambassadors for life” I would have cried with you. And he said, “embarrassed for ever.” They think they own eternity. You’ll see: this eternity will soon be over.
I have no doubt: we all have a lot of work ahead of us.
In the meantime, I want to say a huge thank you to everyone who has supported me all this year and especially the last month. To friends, family, associates, good caring people – acquaintances and strangers. Special thanks to my lawyers Maria Aismont, Vadim Prokhorov and Olga Mikhailova; my witnesses at the “trial” Grigory Yavlinsky, Dmitry Muratov, Alexander Podrabinek and Oleg Orlov; my trustees – Natalia Solzhenitsina, Nathan Scharansky, Pavel Litvinov, Boris Akunin, Andrei Makarevich, Yuri Shevchuk, Alexei Venediktov and many others; to everyone who comes to support me closed doors of the Moscow City Court. Thanks to all the friends and colleagues who raised their voice internationally – both in my defense and in defense of all political prisoners of Russia. This is very important.
My family is most grateful for the support. To grandmother, mother, mother-in-law and father-in-law. (My grandmother was four years old when her father was arrested and shot under Article 58; her husband, my grandfather, was also 58 years old in the Gulag; and recently I congratulated her 90th birthday with a letter from prison. Human life as a reflection of an era. ) I want my children – Catherine, Sophia and Daniel – to know that I love them more than anything in the world. And I want to believe that each of them – at their level and for their age – understands why I couldn’t do it differently.
There are not enough words to express my gratitude to my wife, associate and best friend – Eugenia. We’ve been together for over twenty years, and I know I couldn’t have made it this far without your support. And I understand why two centuries later, the wives of Decembrists are remembered hardly more often than themselves 😁
I love you. Everything will be alright. We will definitely see each other.
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Tomorrow, April 19, an appeal to my sentence will be heard. The session will be held in the Moscow City Court: Bogorodsky val, d. 8, room #323/236. We are starting at 10:45 am The hearings are open, spectators must carry a passport.
Everyone knows how political matters are dealt with in our courts. Nevertheless, we are preparing seriously and thoroughly. Were going to bend our line.
Well, today I had a big interview with the Republic edition. Trying to, you know, have time to say and do more on the eve of the colony stage. Below is a small fragment of my interview with the journalist, and the full interview is available * at: https://republic.ru/posts/108013
“Who could have thought that Putin would wage the largest war on the territory of Europe since World War II? I think that even for many Kremlin residents such frostbite came as a shock. Your rebuke, however, is righteous, and I do not want to justify myself. Already then we had to understand who Putin was and what he was capable of. But apparently, only Boris Nemtsov understood this, who a few months before his death gave Putin a laconic and tough definition… “
See you tomorrow!
*If you are in the territory of Russia, don’t forget to connect VPN.
You can write to Vladimir Kara-Murza in two ways:
- FSIN Letter ( https://fsin-pismo.ru /client/app/letter/create… )
- Jail-5 UFSIN by city Moscow
- Kara-Murza Vladimir Vladimirovich, 1981 p.r.
- In the mail
— 125130, Moscow, st. Vyborgskaya, d. 20, FCU Jail-5
- Kara-Murza Vladimir Vladimirovich, 1981 p.r.
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Evgenia Kara-Murza yesterday:
“If we lose him, if we lose people like Vladimir, who is going to be there to rebuild the country from ruins, to make sure that Russia does not return to an authoritarian or totalitarian regime after the collapse of this one?” Ms. Kara-Murza said. “Vladimir kept on despite two poisoning attacks. Vladimir kept on despite the assassination of his friend,” Boris Nemtsov, the reformist former deputy prime minister, “and that did not scare him. He went back to continue his fight time and again, and I believe that he has shown he would not give up the fight for a free Russia. The free democratic community has a responsibility to stand with people like this.”
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Related:
Daily Telegraph yesterday :
Alexei Navalny is facing a further five years in prison for refusing to share a cell with a smelly inmate, as part of the Kremlin’s latest “provocation”.
Moscow has opened a new criminal case against Russia’s top opposition politician, who is already serving a nine-year prison sentence, Kira Yarmysh, his spokesman said on Tuesday.
Ms Yarmysh said it was the 10th case against the Kremlin critic, who was already facing up to 35 years in prison.
In the latest case, Mr Navalny is accused of “disorganisation of the activity of penitentiary institutions”, which could see him face five more years in prison.
Ms Yarmysh said the administration staged a “provocation” against Mr Navalny by placing an inmate “with personal hygiene problems” in his cell.
The smell was so bad that Mr Navalny “refused to go in there”, added Ms Yarmysh.
According to informal prison “rules”, Ms Yarmysh said that Mr Navalny was expected to use force to kick the inmate out of his cell.
“He told the guards that he would not do it because this convict was not to blame and the administration was using him as a tool,” she said.
After being “hit and dragged into the cell”, Mr Navalny “grabbed [the inmate] by the scruff of the neck and dragged him to the door”, said Ms Yarmysh.
The guards then “surrounded Navalny, pinned him to the wall, and the (penal) colony administration reported that a new criminal case was opened”.
Mr Navalny was poisoned with Novichok, a Soviet-made nerve agent, on a trip to Siberia in 2020.
He underwent treatment in Germany and returned to Russia in January 2021, where he was arrested on landing at a Moscow airport.
His supporters see the charges as a punishment for challenging Vladimir Putin, the Russian president.
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