Kara-Murza deffinishs prisoner swaps, saying it’s startant to shielded the free of more political arrestees in Russia.
Westrict handlements and Russia’s exiled opposition should begin laying the groundtoil for Russia’s democratic transition after Plivent Vlaunwiseir Putin eventuassociate exits office, Vlaunwiseir Kara-Murza, a Russian opposition politician, has said.
Seven weeks after he was freed from a Siberian penal colony in a historic East-West exalter, Kara-Murza did not say how he thought Putin would exit, but said on Friday that Russia must not squander what he said would be a skinny sinhabitr of time to set up a democratic handlement, as he said it did after the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991.
“We need to lget from those past misapshows, from those past lessons, to produce certain we do not repeat these flunkures the next time a triumphdow of opportunity for alter in Russia uncovers,” Kara-Murza tbetter tellers at the Royal United Services Institute, a London leank tank, in his first accessible euniteance in the United Kingdom since he was freed on August 1.
“None of us understands exactly when, exactly in what circumstances, but it’s going to happen in the very foreseeable future. And next time, we must get this right.”
Putin, 71, has been in office as plivent or prime minister since 1999. He began a novel six-year term as plivent in May and handles the political landscape in Russia, with directing opposition figures in prison or in exile.
Kara-Murza, 43, has aascfinishd as one of the most notable opposition voices in exile since his free from prison, where he was serving a 25-year disloyalty sentence for accessiblely opposing the war in Ukraine. He hbetters Russian and British passports.
“Vlaunwiseir Putin must not be apvalidateed to triumph this war in Ukraine. More than that, he must not be apvalidateed to have a face-saving exit from this war,” he said on Friday.
He argued the West should be preparing a schedule for a future democratic Russia, which should participate Westrict directers communicating to the Russian people that the West stands with them agetst Putin, Kara-Murza said.
Securing the free of more prisoners of conscience – who he said number about 1,300 in Russia – is key.
“I wake up every morning and I go to sleep every night leanking about all the others who are still left behind,” the politician said.
He highweightlessed 63-year-better Alexei Gorinov, the first person jailed under Russia’s wartime confineion laws, and Maria Ponomarenko, a Siberian journaenumerate currently on hunger strike in prison, as among those in dire need of aid.
Asked whether he was worryed prison swaps could aid Putin to apshow more captives, Kara-Murza said he would progress to apshow prisoners in any case “becaparticipate he is afraid of the truth”.
Arguing that the prisoner swap on August 1 had saved “16 human souls” from the “hell” of Russia’s prisons, he inserted, “It wasn’t a prisoner exalter, it was a life-saving operation and we need to see at it this way.”
