A Russian Truth-Teller: Vladimir Kara-Murza
Reflections on World Politics: Russia and Ukraine
It is hard for us to imagine what it is like to live in a repressive autocracy, especially one like Putin’s Russia. Autocrats live in a post-truth world, where deception and intimidation create a cruel environment in which truth-telling is not allowed. Vladimir Kara-Murza is just one recent example of Russians who have bravely refused to be silent about the war in Ukraine. But there are others: Alexei Gorinov, a Moscow municipal lawmaker, requested a minute of silence at a council meeting for Ukrainian children killed by Russian bombs. The price he paid for this request was seven years in prison. Maria Ponomarenko, a journalist from Siberia, wrote the truth about a Russian airstrike on the theater in Mariupol, Ukraine, that left hundreds of civilians dead. The price for her was six years in prison.
Vladimir Kara-Murza is a true Russian hero, one of the political leaders in Russia who is courageous enough to speak out against the war in Ukraine and the violence used against opponents of the war effort. Later in his life, after being released from imprisonment in Siberia as a part of a surprisingly large prisoner exchange in 2024, Kaza-Murza has also focused his attention on the Trump administration’s open alliance with dictatorships rather than democracies.
During his first presidency, Trump demonstrated an admiration for Putin that surprised not only European leaders, but also members of his own leadership team. Kara-Murza is now courageously pointing out that in the first two months of his second presidency, he has formed a “Trump-Putin alliance for all to see.”
Note what has occurred:
Trump has blamed Ukraine for Putin’s full-scale invasion of Russia’s neighboring country in February 2022.
Trump has denounced Zelensky as a “dictator without elections” (which accurately describes Putin’s status), and then treated Ukraine’s president in the Oval Office with condescending behavior, rarely if ever seen in the White House with foreign guests.
Trump invited Putin to rejoin the Group of Eight, from which his country was expelled for forcibly taking over Crimea in 2014.
Trump also ordered his government officials to side with Russia and other dictatorships in opposing a United Nation’s resolution condemning Putin’s attack on Ukraine.
Trump’s negative stance toward Ukraine was then immediately implemented when he ordered a pause in U.S. military assistance to Ukraine, particularly intelligence-sharing. This left Ukraine vulnerable to Russian air and missile attacks, causing hundreds of Ukrainian civilian casualties.
Kara-Murza pointed out several other decisions made by Trump that make it clear that Trump’s intention is to form an alliance with Putin’s dictatorship – a country that the Defense Department previously viewed as one of our country’s principal enemies. He also notes that during the last week in March, the Trump administration had talks with Russian leaders in Saudi Arabia at which they promised to help restore Russia’s access to the world market for agricultural and fertilizer exports, lower insurance costs, and enhanced access to ports and global payment systems.
Another dramatic change in our country’s foreign policy was announced when President Trump and his team ended most of the programs led by the U. S. Agency for International Development (USAID), including all projects aimed at supporting civil society and promoting democracy in authoritarian countries. The Trump official who had the task of shutting down USAID’s programs stated in a court affidavit that these programs were “terminated for national interest.” Kara-Murza said that he could not remember a time in modern history when an American administration publicly said that “supporting democratic movements against dictatorships runs counter to U. S. national interests.”
Trump then dismantled the U. S. Agency for Global Media, which administers international broadcasting in 63 languages for an estimated audience of 420 million people in more than 100 countries. Kara-Murza described this “as a gift . . . to dictators all around the world,” a gift the Russians did not expect. Margarita Simonyan, head of Russia’s state propaganda network RT, described this as “an awesome decision by Trump. We couldn’t shut them down, unfortunately, but America did so itself.”
What is most striking about all of this is the silence of America’s political leadership, both Republicans and Democrats. The Republicans control the White House and both Houses of Congress, yet they passively support all these dramatic changes in U. S. foreign policy. Kara-Murza’s issued this warning, which all of us need to take seriously: “Under Trump, dissidents fighting autocracy in Russia and elsewhere must adjust to a new reality in which the United States is not only helping them in their fight but is actually siding with their oppressors.”
Kara-Murza’s entire career has been devoted to fighting for building a democratic civil society in Russia, and he has been in opposition to Vladimir Putin since 2000. After speaking out against the Russian invasion of Ukraine, he was arrested in April 2022 and charged with treason after he accused the Putin government of being a “regime of murderers.” Then, in April 2023, his sentence was increased to 25 years in prison – the maximum possible – and he was sent to a prison colony in Siberia. This sentence was the longest given to an oppositional public figure since the start of the war in Ukraine.
It was a surprise when Kara-Murza and fifteen other prisoners in Russia were pardoned and released as a part of the 2024 Russian prisoner exchange, in which eight Russians who were in prison in several Western European countries were released. Kara-Murza’s long sentence in Siberia would have ended his life, as it had with other Russian dissidents, most notably Alexei Navalny. The story of his life and other Russian truth-tellers will follow in this newsletter in the weeks ahead.
Vladimir Kara-Murza is a hero, a man of great courage, and even now he is adamant that the future belongs to democracy, not dictatorships. Read his columns in The Washington Post, where he continues to work against Putin’s oppression in Russia, but also is tracking developments with the Trump administration – especially the president’s efforts to build a “Trump-Putin alliance.” In our post-truth world, populated by autocrats whose regimes are built upon lies, Kara-Murza has been a truth-teller in Russia; he now can help us here in the United States, where truth-tellers in public life have become increasingly hard to find.
Helpful Resources:
Vladimir Kara-Murza, “Justice is coming for Vladimir Putin,” The Washington Post (July 1, 2025).
Vladimir Kara-Murza, “A Trump-Putin alliance, for all to see,” The Washington Post (April 1, 2025).
Dr. John A. Bernbaum
Writer and Educator
Co-Author with Philip Yancey:
What Went Wrong?: Russia's Lost Opportunity and the Path to Ukraine