The Biden administration on Friday sanctioned a number of Russian individuals connected to the arbitrary detention of Vladimir Kara-Murza, a prominent human rights advocate and Kremlin critic who has been jailed in Moscow for nearly a year after speaking out against the war in Ukraine in an interview with CNN, APA reports.
The United States has called for Kara-Murza’s “immediate and unconditional release,” but Friday’s actions represent a long-awaited decision on imposing sanctions against Russia for his imprisonment.
Kara-Murza, who has survived two poisonings, has been incredibly critical of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russia’s war in Ukraine, and he continues to speak out even as he is detained.
In March 2022, Kara-Murza spoke before the Arizona House of Representatives and spoke out against the war. In an April 2022 interview with CNN, he called Putin’s government “a regime of murderers.” He was arrested shortly thereafter for “failing to obey the orders of law enforcement,” according to his wife.
The Russian "Government later brought additional politically motivated charges against him, and Kara-Murza currently faces the prospect of more than 30 years in prison,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement Friday.
The Treasury Department on Friday imposed sanctions under an expansion of the Global Magnitsky Act, which targets serious human rights abusers, more than five months after the top Democrat and Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee called on the Biden administration to take action under that law.
The sanctions target Elena Anatolievna Lenskaya, Andrei Andreevich Zadachin, and Danila Yurievich Mikheev.
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