BIOGRAPHY OF VLADIMIR KARA-MURZA

Vladimir Kara-Murza, a prominent political activist and journalist and former deputy leader of the People's Freedom Party was a candidate for the Russian State Duma.

He is a contributing writer at the Washington Post, hosted a weekly show on Echo of Moscow radio, and has worked for the BBC, RTVi, and Kommersant. He has directed three documentary films: They Chose Freedom, Nemtsov, and My Duty Not to Stay Silent. He is the author of Reform or Revolution: The Quest for Responsible Government in the First Russian State Duma.

Vladimir Kara-Murza was a close associate of prominent opposition leader Boris Nemtsov and cooperated with former prisoner of conscience Mikhail Khodorkovsky and other political opposition groups, human rights NGOs, and independent media.

Vladimir Kara-Murza survived two poisoning attempts in 2015 and 2017. According to the investigative collective Bellingcat, before these poisonings, he had been followed by the same Federal Security Service (FSB) unit that would later poison Aleksei Navalny. There has been no investigation by the Russian authorities into either poisoning.

Kara-Murza was a crucial contributor to the lobbying and implementation the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act of 2012.

Throughout his political career, he served in various positions, including as a representative of the Russia’s Union of Right Forces Party in Great Britain and Vladimir Bukovsky’s representative to Russia’s Central Electoral Commission. Kara-Murza was elected to several councils, including the federal council of Solidarnost (Russia’s united democratic movement), the federal council of the Republican Party of Russia / People’s Freedom Party, and the Coordinating Council of the Russian Opposition. In 2015-2016, he was Deputy Leader of People’s Freedom Party. Further, Kara-Murza was a candidate for the Russian Parliament in 2003.