Oppositionist and Kremlin critic: Who is Vladimir Kara-Murza?

Russian oppositionist Vladimir Kara-Murza (41) is a historian, journalist and opposition politician who studied at Cambridge University in England.

Kara-Murza was sentenced to 25 years in prison for treason in Moscow.

He was a close associate of leading opposition figure Boris Nemtsov, who was assassinated near the Kremlin in 2015, while Kara-Murza continued to speak out against Russian President Vladimir Putin despite increasing risks, Reuters reports.

Kara-Murza currently holds both a Russian and a British passport.

Twice, in 2015 and 2017, Kara-Murza fell ill because, as he said, he was poisoned by the Russian security services. In this case, he fell into a coma before recovering.

The Russian authorities have denied these allegations.

Kara-Murza's lawyers say that because of this she suffers from a serious nerve disorder - polyneuropathy.

Kara-Murza also stands out as one of the few opposition politicians who remained active after the Russian invasion of Ukraine last February, denouncing the war and defying new censorship laws.

Indictment

Kara-Murza was arrested in April last year, hours after CNN aired an interview in which he said Russia was run by a "regime of killers."

He was branded a "foreign agent" and accused of spreading false information about the actions of the Russian military in Ukraine, because of a speech he gave a month earlier in the Arizona House of Representatives. In that speech, he said that Putin "drops cluster bombs on residential areas, mothers' homes, hospitals and schools".

In July, he was additionally accused of involvement in two opposition forums located abroad, which Russia labeled as "undesirable". Finally, on October 6, he was charged with treason for public speeches he made in Lisbon, Helsinki and Washington.

Prosecutors asked for a sentence of 25 years in prison.

The trial was held behind closed doors, but Kara-Murza's wife and lawyer released a copy of the speech he gave in court. He said he had done nothing wrong, comparing the whole process to the trials carried out by Joseph Stalin in the 1930s.

"Criminals should repent for what they did. I, on the other hand, am in prison because of my political views. I also know that the day will come when the darkness over our country will dissipate," said Kara-Murza, pointing out that the whole case against him based on "political vendetta".