Russia’s biggest independent news site, Meduza, published identical claims against outspoken tech executive Ilya Krasilshchik. The actions against the two Kremlin opponents are part of a broader assault on anyone opposing Russia’s conflict in Ukraine.
Vladimir Kara-Murza Jr.’s lawyer claimed Friday that officials had charged him with distributing “false information” about the Russian military.
In late February, Russia passed a legislation making distributing false information about its military a crime. The crime carries a maximum 15-year sentence. Human rights groups have identified 32 instances targeting invasion critics.
Kara-Murza is a journalist and a former acquaintance of late Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov and oligarch-turned-dissident Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Kara-Murza was hospitalized twice for poisoning in 2015 and 2017.
According to lawyer Vadim Prokhorov, the current allegations against Kara-Murza stem from a March 15 address to the Arizona House of Representatives.
In public speeches in March and early April, the activist criticized Russia’s activities in Ukraine. In an interview with CNN on April 11, he called the Kremlin “a dictatorship of assassins.”
Kara-Murza was arrested hours later and sentenced to 15 days in prison for defying a cop. Prokhorov claimed his client was supposed to appear in court Friday but was instead questioned by the Russian Investigative Committee.
Prokhorov stated Kara-Murza is innocent.
Investigators have asked a Moscow court to hold Kara-Murza in pre-trial custody for two months. Prokhorov announced the hearing on Facebook.
Krasilshchik, a software executive who fled Russia in early March, told Meduza he learned about the case via news reports that remained unsubstantiated Friday evening. The allegations were related to an Instagram picture displaying burnt human remains in the Kyiv neighborhood of Bucha, according to Krasilshchik.
“You can’t recover after seeing the images from Bucha,” the photo caption read. “You feel that the army of this country of ours, it’s capable of anything … and so is the country. That we’re just an order away from mass executions.”
Also Friday, veteran Russian human rights activist Lev Ponomaryov said in an online statement that he was “temporarily” leaving the country.
“The situation around me and my rights organizations has been frightening for a long time,” Ponomaryov announced on the website of the NGO “For Human Rights,” which he led from 2019 to 2021, when it shut down due to Russia’s controversial restrictions on entities deemed “foreign agents.”
“There have been constant provocations, spam attacks, detentions, and — I will be frank — ambiguous information from various sources regarding (authorities’) plans to do with me,” he added.
Ponomaryov, a former State Duma lawmaker who had helped found Russia’s oldest human rights organization in the 1980s, has been a vocal opponent of Russia’s attack on Ukraine, and initiated multiple public petitions against it.
In his statement Friday, he claimed to be “allowing himself to take a vacation” to “look after my health …, but also think through the difficult situation in which we all find ourselves, and plan further (campaigning) activities, which we cannot stop by any means.”
“I doubt my time away will be long,” he added.
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