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„Trump dał się nabrać na komplementy Putina” – rosyjski działacz opozycyjny Kara-Murza
Rosyjski działacz opozycyjny i były więzień polityczny Władimir Kara-Murza mówi, że to, jak zachodni przywódcy odnosili się do Putina w przeszłości było „szokujące i haniebne” i dało prezydentowi Rosji swobodę działania, co doprowadziło do osłabienia demokracji w tym kraju.
CZYTAJ WIĘCEJ : http://pl.euronews.com/2025/07/31/trump-dal-sie-nabrac-na-komplementy-putina-rosyjski-dzialacz-opozycyjny-kara-murza
Zasubskrybuj nasz kanał.Euronews jest dostępny na Dailymotion w 12 językach
Rosyjski działacz opozycyjny i były więzień polityczny Władimir Kara-Murza mówi, że to, jak zachodni przywódcy odnosili się do Putina w przeszłości było „szokujące i haniebne” i dało prezydentowi Rosji swobodę działania, co doprowadziło do osłabienia demokracji w tym kraju.
CZYTAJ WIĘCEJ : http://pl.euronews.com/2025/07/31/trump-dal-sie-nabrac-na-komplementy-putina-rosyjski-dzialacz-opozycyjny-kara-murza
Zasubskrybuj nasz kanał.Euronews jest dostępny na Dailymotion w 12 językach
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00:00My guest this week on the Europe Conversation is Russian political activist Vladimir Kara Mirza.
00:13He was sentenced to 25 years in prison in Siberia for criticising Putin's war in Ukraine.
00:19He was released in 2024 as part of a prisoner swap.
00:22But he tells me that despite everything, he's still optimistic about the future for Russia and Ukraine.
00:30Vladimir Kara Mirza, Russian opposition politician, former political prisoner.
00:34Thank you very much for joining us on the Europe Conversation.
00:36Thank you so much for inviting me. It's a pleasure to be here.
00:38Now, I'm sure so many people have said this to you, but obviously you should not be here.
00:42You were poisoned in 2015 and 2017. You had a 5% chance of living.
00:46You were told you were in a coma for a month.
00:49And then just a couple of years ago, you were sentenced to 25 years in prison in Siberia.
00:53And you managed to be released as part of a deal with former U.S. President Joe Biden.
00:59Tell us, first of all, about that.
01:01You know, the first time you got poisoned, what exactly happened?
01:05How did they do it? How did you realise what was happening?
01:07Well, I'd been involved in Russian opposition politics for many years.
01:10I came to work with Boris Nemtsov, who was the most prominent leader of the Russian Democratic opposition,
01:15former deputy prime minister, who was assassinated in front of the Kremlin, literally, 10 years ago, in 2015.
01:20I came to work with him back in 1999.
01:21And I was myself a candidate for the Russian parliament back in 2003,
01:26when it was still possible for opposition candidates to be on the ballot.
01:28It was unimaginable.
01:29And for many years, Boris Nemtsov and I were involved in the international advocacy campaign
01:34for the passage of Magnetsky Act.
01:36So the laws that would introduce targeted personal sanctions
01:39in a form of visa bans and asset freezes against officials of the Putin regime
01:43and of any other dictatorial regime around the world
01:45who are personally complicit in human rights abuses and corruption.
01:50And as you can imagine, that's not a very popular thing in the Kremlin
01:53because these people, the people around Putin,
01:56have long been used to the idea of stealing in Russia.
01:59And that was first poisoned in May of 2015.
02:03I had no doubt from the beginning that it was the Russian security service,
02:06but now we know, thanks to an international media investigation led by Bellingcat,
02:10that have identified actually the people, not just the unit,
02:12but the specific people, officers in the Russian FSB,
02:16whose task it is to physically liquidate political opponents of Vladimir Putin.
02:21This was May 2015.
02:22I was at a meeting with my colleagues in Moscow,
02:23and suddenly I felt that I had difficulty breathing.
02:26And then I felt like I couldn't breathe at all,
02:28and I started to sweat.
02:31My heart began to beat really, really fast.
02:34And before I knew it, I was unconscious.
02:36It's a very scary feeling to feel that you're dying.
02:39This is what I felt like.
02:39I felt that this is the end.
02:41And then I was brought to a hospital,
02:42and doctors told my wife that I had about a 5% chance to live.
02:45I was on artificial life support with a multiple organ failure,
02:50in a coma,
02:51and the official diagnosis that was given to me at my Moscow hospital
02:55was toxic action by an unidentified substance,
02:59which translated from medical speak to normal human language means poisoning.
03:02I did survive.
03:04The doctors saved my life,
03:05and then I had to basically spend a year to learn to walk again,
03:10to learn to use a spoon again.
03:11I mean, everything was just gone.
03:12And then as soon as I was able to, I went back to Russia and it was in my work,
03:15but then it happened again in February 2017.
03:16The exact same thing.
03:17Same diagnosis, same conditions.
03:19And now, thanks to that amazing Bellingcat investigation,
03:22we know of the existence of this special unit within the Russian FSB,
03:26the Russian Federal Security Service.
03:28And so this is the reality of today's Russia,
03:33that there is a special government unit
03:34whose job it is to physically eliminate,
03:37to murder political opponents of Vladimir Putin.
03:39You were outspoken against the corruption
03:41and the sort of sanctimony and so on within Russia.
03:45And that trajectory has left us to a place
03:47where it's impossible to have an opposition politician,
03:50people being poisoned,
03:52falling out, being thrown out of windows,
03:54assassinated on foreign soil and so on.
03:57I mean, how did it get to that point?
03:59Was it that the international community ignored Putin?
04:02Well, it was shocking and shameful, frankly,
04:04the way many Western leaders behaved when Putin came to power.
04:06You know, there's this myth that is often propagated nowadays
04:10by people both inside but also outside of Russia,
04:12very often for reasons of self-justification.
04:15And the myth is that there was some kind of an early Putin
04:17who was supposedly okay, you know,
04:19who believed in reform or modernization
04:20and cooperation with the West.
04:22And then something went horribly wrong along the way,
04:25and now it's this Putin who's doing all these things.
04:27Nothing could be further from the truth.
04:29Putin was Putin from the very beginning.
04:31In fact, I remember very well
04:33the day I understood exactly who that man was
04:35and what direction he would take our country.
04:37On the 20th of December, 1999,
04:39this was before he became president,
04:40he was still prime minister,
04:42he came to Lubyanka Square in Moscow
04:44at the former KGB, now FSB headquarters,
04:46to officially unveil a memorial plaque
04:49to Yuri Andropov,
04:50a longtime former Soviet KGB chief,
04:53who was one of the people instrumental
04:54in the 1956 invasion of Hungary,
04:57who was somebody who prioritized
04:59the suppression of domestic dissent
05:02when he was chairman of the KGB,
05:03somebody who embodied everything that was wrong
05:05with the communist system.
05:07And it is to this man
05:08that Vladimir Putin chose to unveil a memorial plaque.
05:11In Russia, symbols are important.
05:12In Russia, symbols matter.
05:13And I had no more questions.
05:15He could not have chosen a more potent symbol
05:17to signal the direction of his future rule.
05:19And just in case anybody still had questions,
05:22in the first year of his presidency,
05:24Mr. Putin reinstated the Stalin-era Soviet national anthem
05:27as the national anthem of the Russian Federation.
05:29What do you think when you heard the likes of U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff
05:33praise Vladimir Putin and say,
05:36oh, he prayed for Donald Trump
05:38when he got shot at during one of his rallies
05:41and that he's actually a good guy?
05:44Look, Vladimir Putin, of course, is a former KGB officer.
05:46And as he once himself publicly admitted,
05:48the favorite part of his job was recruiting people.
05:51And to be a successful recruiter,
05:53you need to know what your interlocutor,
05:55sort of what kind of person he or she is,
05:57and you need to sort of get in their trust.
06:00And that's exactly what he used when he came to power.
06:03George W. Bush was a devout Christian,
06:05is a devout Christian.
06:06And so when Putin met with him,
06:07he told him the story about a cross
06:09that his mother had given him
06:10that, you know, survived in this massive fire
06:13at his dacha and whatever else.
06:15And that's when President Bush came out
06:17and said he looked into his eyes and saw his soul.
06:19And, you know, I think he rightly calculated,
06:21Putin did,
06:22that the best way to do this with Donald Trump
06:25is through personal flattery.
06:27And that's exactly what he did with that conversation
06:29about praying for him
06:30and also, of course, giving him a painting
06:34that Mr. Witkoff brought to Washington.
06:38I mean, look,
06:38these are tricks that have been used by Soviet,
06:42and not just Soviet security services,
06:43for decades.
06:46It's incomprehensible to me
06:47how serious people can fall for this kind of stuff
06:50in the 21st century.
06:51So let's look at the opposition,
06:52because I know for a long time
06:53you are very optimistic about the future of Russia.
06:56I still am.
06:57Yeah, that's the thing.
06:58Because it doesn't look like
06:59there's any hope for optimism.
07:01Putin is alive and well,
07:02because I remember for a long time
07:03people kind of thought
07:04that he might have cancer and so on.
07:06There doesn't look like there's any chance
07:08of him being overthrown.
07:10Prigozhin sort of tried that and failed.
07:13I'm not just a politician,
07:14I'm also a historian by my education.
07:15And the one thing we know very clearly
07:17from the history of Russia
07:18is that all major political change
07:20in our country happens like this.
07:22Right.
07:23Swiftly, suddenly,
07:24and completely unexpectedly.
07:25Both the Tsarist regime
07:26at the beginning of the 20th century
07:28and the Communist regime
07:30at the end of the 20th century
07:31went down in three days.
07:32Literally, not a metaphor.
07:34This is how things happen in Russia.
07:35None of us knows
07:36when or how change will come.
07:38What we do know
07:39is that nothing is forever.
07:41And everything that had a beginning
07:42will have an end.
07:43And every dictatorship
07:44in the history of the world has fallen.
07:45Do you have any ideas
07:47that there may be
07:49anyone within the regime
07:50that would be willing
07:52to overthrow Putin?
07:54What I do know for sure
07:55is that there are many people in Russia,
07:57inside Russia today,
07:58who completely disagree with this regime,
08:00who categorically oppose
08:01this war of aggression.
08:03And, you know,
08:03when I was in prison,
08:04I would receive thousands of letters
08:05from all over the country,
08:06every month,
08:07from people I'd never met,
08:08from towns and cities I've never been to,
08:09some of them I hadn't even heard of.
08:11And these were the people
08:11who took the time
08:13and the risk, by the way,
08:14to write to somebody like me,
08:15you know,
08:15an enemy of the people
08:16using the official prison correspondence system.
08:17Those letters get through to you.
08:19Some did, some didn't,
08:20but many did
08:20because they have to go
08:21through prison censorship.
08:22And, of course,
08:22you need to leave
08:23all your contact details and so on.
08:25And people wrote to say
08:27that they think like I do.
08:29They think the same
08:30of this war as I do.
08:31And you will remember
08:32last year in 2024,
08:34we had a so-called
08:35presidential election in Russia
08:37with, you know,
08:37a circus with Putin
08:38and a couple of pre-approved clowns
08:40running alongside him
08:41on the ballot.
08:41And then suddenly,
08:43there was this guy,
08:44this candidate,
08:44a former member of the
08:45parliament
08:45and a lawyer
08:46by the name of Boris Nadezhdin
08:48who announced
08:49that he would run
08:50as the anti-war presidential candidate
08:52saying he's against the war
08:53in Ukraine
08:53and he would end it on day one.
08:55And the public response
08:56was just unimaginable.
08:57Suddenly,
08:58all over Russia,
09:00in large cities
09:00and small towns,
09:01you would see
09:02hours-long queues
09:04of people standing
09:05at his campaign offices
09:06to sign the ballot
09:07nominating petitions
09:08because you need to get
09:09a certain number of signatures
09:10to be registered
09:11as a candidate.
09:11and this was happening
09:13all over the country
09:14and, you know,
09:15I would see
09:15in the letters
09:16people would send me
09:17the photographs
09:18from those long lines
09:20and people were saying
09:21how important it was for them.
09:22They gave you hope.
09:22Absolutely,
09:24because, you know,
09:24the Putin propaganda
09:25tries to convince everybody,
09:26both in Russia
09:27and in the West,
09:28that, you know,
09:28the Russian society
09:29is this monolith,
09:30that everybody supports Putin,
09:31everybody backs the war.
09:32And, of course,
09:33he was not allowed
09:33on the ballot
09:34as usually happens in Russia,
09:36but that was besides the point
09:37because suddenly people saw
09:38that there were people like me
09:39that they were not alone.
09:40Just a final question
09:41because, you know,
09:41you're obviously a historian as well.
09:42What was it like
09:43to hear you were being sent
09:44to prison in Siberia?
09:45Because we hear of Siberia
09:47from the Cold War,
09:49from the Soviet Union,
09:50and even the image
09:52of it straight away,
09:53it's just cruelty,
09:54inhumanity, death.
09:56What was it like
09:57when you heard that?
09:58And what was it like
09:58being in prison in Siberia?
09:59I mean, obviously,
10:00you thought you were
10:00never coming out.
10:01You were given 25 years.
10:02Yes, I was certain
10:03I was going to die there
10:04and that exchange
10:05that took place last year
10:06was a miracle.
10:06This is the only way
10:07I can describe it.
10:08But as a historian,
10:10of course,
10:11I've read and reread
10:13in prison many memoirs
10:15by Soviet dissidents,
10:16literature on the Stalin period,
10:18of course,
10:18Solzhenitsyn and Shalanov
10:19and, of course,
10:21books going even further
10:23back in the 19th century.
10:24The city where I was
10:25in prison, for example,
10:26Omsk,
10:27a large city
10:27in western Siberia.
10:29This is where
10:29some of the Decembrists
10:30were in prison
10:31back in the early 19th century.
10:32This was where
10:33Dostoevsky was in prison.
10:34So his letters
10:35from the House of the Dead
10:36was written
10:36on his experience
10:37in prison in Omsk.
10:39And then, of course,
10:39in the 20th century,
10:40Solzhenitsyn was in
10:41that transit prison
10:42in Omsk and so on.
10:43What was really astonishing
10:44to me is that
10:45how everything
10:46down to the last details
10:47is still exactly the same
10:48as it was in communist times.
10:50For example,
10:51Alexander Solzhenitsyn,
10:52in the first circle,
10:53he describes at the very end
10:54the route
10:54that the prisoners
10:55were taken from Moscow
10:56to Siberia by.
10:58And they went through
10:59the Kuybyshev transit prison.
11:01Kuybyshev today
11:01is called Samara,
11:02back to its original name.
11:03That was exactly the route
11:04I was taken
11:06by the Stolipin carriages,
11:07which is the Russian
11:08prisoner train transports,
11:09which, again,
11:10haven't changed
11:10in a century.
11:12And so, you know,
11:13there's this saying
11:13that every historian
11:15subconsciously wishes
11:16to personally experience
11:17the subject of his study.
11:18I guess, be careful
11:18what you wish for
11:19if that is true.
11:20That's what we're going
11:21through your head as well,
11:22I'm sure,
11:22at the same time.
11:23As well as that,
11:23you're doomed,
11:24but also,
11:25this is how I imagined it.
11:27But also,
11:28we know how it ends.
11:29We know that none
11:30of these regimes continued.
11:32We know that all
11:32of these regimes fell.
11:33The Tsarist regime fell,
11:34the communist regime fell,
11:36and this one,
11:36the Putin regime,
11:37will fall
11:37absolutely any time.
11:39This is the point
11:40about Russia.
11:41We don't know.
11:41It might be in five years,
11:42it might be in three months.
11:44Lenin, in his famous speech
11:45in Zurich in January 1917,
11:47said that we old folks
11:48will not live to see
11:48this coming revolution.
11:49The revolution happened
11:50in six weeks.
11:51Brilliant.
11:51Vladimir Karamuzer,
11:52thank you very much
11:52for joining us
11:53on the Europe Conversation.
11:54Thank you so much
11:55for inviting me.
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