I can’t imagine. But in people like Vladimir Kara-Murza, dedication sometimes overrides good sense.

On August 1st of this year, he was released, along with fifteen other prisoners, from a Russian prison camp where he was serving a 25-year sentence for high treason. He had been detained in April of 2022, tried and convicted a year later, and sent to maximum security prison IK-6, where he was held — in deteriorating health — in solitary confinement.

Finally being moved to the penal colony’s hospital, he believed he was being taken out to be executed. Instead, he next found himself on a plane to Turkey, where he learned that he was part of a multi-nation spy swap that included Americans Evan Gershkovich, Alsu Kurmasheva, and Paul Whelan.

Like the others, all he had done — what was said to constitute treason in Russia — was to verbally oppose the regime of Vladimir Putin.

A dual British-Russian citizen, Kara-Murza was now free to return to his family and a normal life. But in an interview this week with BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg, he told the following story:

“You know, when our plane was taking off from Vnukovo airport in Moscow en route to Ankara on 1 August, the FSB officer who was my personal escort sitting next to me turned to me and said, ‘Look out the window, this is the last time you’re seeing your motherland.’

“And I just laughed in his face, and I said, ‘Look, man, I am a historian, I don’t just think, I don’t just believe, I know that I’ll be back home in Russia, and it’s going to happen much sooner than you can imagine.’” [Laura Kuenssberg, BBC, September 21, 2024.]

I am not personally acquainted with Vladimir Kara-Murza; but it is quite obvious that this is not the sort of thing he would joke about, least of all under the conditions of that momentous day.

So what does he have in mind? Perhaps his full interview will reveal more; or perhaps he doesn’t have a definite plan yet. But for an individual who has gone through — no, been put through — what he has in the last two and a half years by the leader of his native country, and to still have the desire to return for whatever reason . . . well, that is just too difficult for me to fathom.

He is obviously driven by some internal force stronger than any fear for his own safety. Is it love of one’s motherland? Or of its people? A desire to fight for the future of those people, to bring freedom at last to a nation that has only had the most teasing taste of it before once again losing it to yet another tyrannical dictator?

Whatever it is, Vladimir Kara-Murza — having survived those two-plus years in hell — is clearly a man of strength and determination. I fear for him; at the same time have the greatest respect for him; and cannot wait to see what the next chapter of his life will bring.

Best of luck, Vladimir Vladimirovich.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
9/23/24