“Say it isn’t so!” were the only words that came to my mind as I checked the news one final time before heading for bed around 2:00 this morning.

In a horrible deja vu moment, last night’s news item — not even a major headline, though it should have been — felt like the worst kind of gut-punch. It was the tragic saga of Alexei Navalny being played out all over again . . . only this time, it’s Vladimir Kara-Murza’s life being played with.

A well-known, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, politician, and vocal opponent of everything Vladimir Putin stands for, he was convicted in April 2023 of treason for spreading “false” information about the Russian army, and for being linked to an “undesirable organization.” His sentence: 25 years in prison. His real crime: giving an interview to CNN in 2022 in which he had the courage to criticize the Kremlin for its invasion of Ukraine and its persecution of political opponents:

“These people have a literally decades-long track record of going after their political opponents. Poison has been a particularly favored method because it gives them — or at least it did until all of these media investigations came out — plausible deniability. This regime that is in power in our country today, it’s not just corrupt, it’s not just kleptocratic, it’s not just authoritarian — it is a regime of murderers. And it is important to say it out loud.” [Radina Gigova and Christian Edwards, CNN, July 5, 2024.]

He was arrested shortly thereafter.

Following his 2023 conviction and sentencing, he was sent to the maximum-security penal colony known as IK-6 in Omsk, Siberia, where he has been kept in solitary confinement and denied treatment for serious medical conditions as his health steadily declines — medical conditions, including polyneuropathy, that he attributes to the 2015 and 2017 suspected poisonings by the Russian nerve agent Novichok.

And now his wife, Evgenia, reports that he has suddenly been moved to a prison hospital in another area of Omsk. His lawyers had traveled to the prison from Moscow to meet with him on Thursday, and were made to wait for five hours before finally being told that he had been moved to the hospital. When they went to the hospital on Friday morning, they were advised that he was “still being examined by doctors and had not yet been fully processed.” They were not allowed to see him on Friday, and were told that the facility would be closed over the weekend. [CNN, id.]

It is now the weekend, and Kara-Murza’s family, friends, lawyers — along with the rest of the world — sit in a holding pattern that is all too reminiscent of the months of waiting and wondering and fearing for the fate of Alexei Navalny . . . who died in prison under suspicious circumstances while the world waited.

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What about a swap? Although such negotiations are kept in strictest confidence, it is likely that behind-the-scenes talks are taking place with regard to Vladimir Kara-Murza. Can he be traded for one or more Russians being held in another country? Possibly; but it won’t be simple — none of these cases are. Kara-Murza is a citizen of both Russia and the United Kingdom, but the U.K. has an absolute “no-prisoner-exchange” policy. He also holds U.S. Permanent Residence status, which makes him eligible for such an exchange by the U.S. Government; but there has not yet been any word of negotiations having been undertaken. If they have, it is being kept quiet.

So, again, we wait, while Vladimir Putin moves his hostages around his virtual chess board, or tosses a coin to determine who’s next.

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“Asked by CNN why he had chosen to return to Russia after recovering from his poisoning — and knowing the risks faced by Kremlin critics — he [Kara-Murza] said: ‘I’m a Russian politician. I have to be in Russia. It’s my home country. I think the biggest gift we could give — those of us who are in opposition to Putin’s regime — to the Kremlin, is to give up and run. I mean, that’s all they want from us.’” [CNN, id.]

How long is the world going to keep running?!!

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
7/6/24