Yevgeniya Kara-Mursa's husband, Vladimir, has survived two poison attacks and is incarcerated in a “prison colony” in Siberia. The Kremlin critic spoke about Alexei Navalny's death and what the West should do.
There is a story about the sticks. Individually they are easy to break, but when tied together they are strong. Russian Kremlin critic Yevgenia Kara-Mursa, whose husband Vladimir survived two poison attacks and was sentenced to 25 years in a penal colony last year, also wants solidarity. If she wants something from the West, it is unity, she told “ZiB 2” on Tuesday: unity in supporting Ukraine and those who oppose the regime; Unity in the willingness to hold autocrat Vladimir Putin accountable for his actions, Kara-Mursa said. Because “Putin exceeded all limits”.
Putin saw Navalny “as a personal enemy”
Anyone who follows the West's discourse on Russia knows that this desired unity is not necessarily achieved. Not even after the death of opposition politician Alexei Navalny, who died in custody under dubious circumstances. Yevgeniya Kara-Mursa said on the news that he had difficulty “talking about Alexei in the past tense.” She does not believe “that we can have any doubts” that Putin had Navalny assassinated: Putin saw Navalny “as a personal enemy”.
Moderator Armin Wolf also asked the frequently asked question in the West about why Navalny returned to Russia after the poison attack. The opposition politician knew that prison and death could await him in his homeland. “Alexei believed – and my husband also believes – that Russia deserved better,” the Kremlin critic tried to explain. Navalny wanted to stand alongside those who were exposed to repression “at home in Russia” and wanted to try “to show by their own example that they can overcome their fears.”
“The most difficult level in the Russian penal system.”
The dissident, who lives in the USA with her three children, spoke calmly about her husband. At the end of January, Vladimir Kara-Mursa was transferred to a “prison colony with so-called special regimes”, “the most difficult level of the Russian penal system”. Contact with him is scarce, to say the least. Yevgenia Kara-Mursa says she last heard him last summer. He received a 15-minute interview. She decided that each of the three children could talk to him for five minutes. And she said she was next to him with a stopwatch.
A week ago they would have celebrated 20 years of marriage. According to Kara-Mursa, the call request was rejected by the Russian authorities: the reason was that the occasion was not unusual enough. Wolf asked if she wasn't scared. “I fear for him every day, but I can't let fear for him stop me from doing the work that's really important to him and me.”
She believes Putin is unlikely to give up power at any point. “I believe he intends to rule Russia as long as he is alive. And sometimes I think he thinks it's forever.” For the upcoming “elections” in mid-March, the winner of which has already been decided, she would like Putin to be referred to differently in the West: “not as the legitimate ruler of the Federation Russian”, but “as a criminal wanted by the International Criminal Court”, said Kara-Mursa. Whether it is possible to reach an agreement on this? Doubtful. But perhaps the situation is different with individual courts: alone they may seem weak. But you can't break them all at once.
>> For the interview on TVthek