'Trump is falling for Putin's flattery'- Russian opposition activist, Kara-Murza

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'Trump is falling for Putin's flattery'- Russian opposition activist, Kara-Murza  Russian opposition activist and former political prisoner, Vladimir Kara Murza says Western leaders’ treatment of Putin in the past was "shocking and shameful", and gave Putin leeway and erode democracy in Russia.  READ MORE : http://www.euronews.com/2025/07/31/trump-is-falling-for-putins-flattery-russian-opposition-activist-kara-murza  Subscribe to our channel. Euronews is available on Dailymotion in 12 languages

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00:00my guest this week on the europe conversation is russian political activist vladimir kara

00:12mirza he was sentenced to 25 years in prison in siberia for criticizing putin's war in ukraine

00:18he was released in 2024 as part of a prisoner swap but he tells me that despite everything

00:24he's still optimistic about the future for russia and ukraine

00:30vladimir kara mirza russian opposition politician former political prisoner thank you very much for

00:34joining us on the europe conversation thank 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 you were

00:42poisoned in 2015 and 2017 you had a five percent chance of living you were told you were in a coma

00:48for a month and 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 the u.s former u.s president joe biden tell

00:59us first of all about that and you know the first time you got poisoned what exactly happened how did

01:05they do it how did you realize what was happening when i've been involved in russian opposition

01:09politics for many years i came to work with boris nemtsov who was the most prominent leader of the

01:13russian democratic opposition former deputy prime minister who was assassinated in front of the kremlin

01:17literally 10 years ago in 2015 i came to work with him back in 1999 and i was myself a candidate

01:24for the russian parliament back in 2003 when it was still possible for opposition candidates to be on the

01:28ballot to this unimaginable and for many years um boris nemtsov and i were involved in in the

01:33international advocacy campaign for the passage of magnetsky act so the laws that would introduce

01:38targeted personal sanctions in a form of visa bans and asset freezes against officials of the putin

01:43regime and of any other dictatorial regime around the world who are personally complicit in human

01:47rights abuses and and corruption and as you can imagine that's not a very popular thing in the

01:52kremlin because these people the people around putin have long been used to the idea of stealing

01:59in russia and i was first poisoned in may of 2015 i had no doubt from the beginning that it was the

02:05russian security service but now we know thanks to an international media investigation led by

02:10bellingcat that have identified actually the people not just the unit but the specific people officers in

02:14the in the russian fsb whose task it is to physically liquidate political opponents of

02:18of vladimir putin um this was may 2015 i was at a meeting with my colleagues in moscow and suddenly

02:24i felt that i had difficulty breathing uh and then i felt like i couldn't breathe at all and i

02:28started to to sweat my heart began to beat um really really fast and before i knew it i was i was

02:35unconscious it's a very scary feeling to to feel that you're dying this is what i felt like i felt

02:40that this is the end uh and then i was brought to a hospital and and doctors told my wife that i had

02:44about a five percent chance to live i was in a you know an artificial life support with a multiple

02:48organ failure in a coma and um the official diagnosis that was given to me uh at my moscow hospital

02:55was toxic action by an unidentified substance which you know translated from medical speak to normal human

03:01language means poisoning i did survive um the doctors saved my life and then i had to basically

03:07spend a year to learn to walk again to learn to use a spoon again i mean everything was just gone and

03:12then as soon as i was able to i went back to russia and it was in my work but then it happened again

03:15in february 2017 the exact same thing same diagnosis same same conditions and now thanks to that amazing

03:21bellingcat investigation we know of the existence of this special unit within the russian fsb the

03:26russian federal security service uh and so this is the reality of today's russia that there is a

03:33special government unit whose job it is to physically eliminate to murder political opponents of

03:38vladimir putin you're outspoken against the corruption and the sort of sanctimony and so on

03:43in within russia and that trajectory has left us to a place where it's impossible to have an opposition

03:49politician people being poisoned uh falling out from being thrown out of windows assassinated on

03:55foreign soil and so on i mean how did it get to that point was it that the international community

04:01ignored putin well it was shocking and shameful frankly the way many western leaders behaved when putin came to power

04:06you know there's this myth that is often propagated nowadays by people both inside but also outside of

04:12russia very often for reasons of self-justification and the myth is that there was some kind of an early

04:17putin who was supposedly okay you know who believed in reform or modernization and cooperation with the

04:21west and then something went horribly wrong along the way and and now it's this putin who's doing all

04:26these things nothing could be further from the truth putin was putin from the very beginning in fact i remember

04:32very well the day i understood exactly who that man was in what direction he would take our country

04:37on a 20th of december 1999 this was before he became president he was still prime minister

04:41he came to lubyanka square in moscow at the former kgb now fsb headquarters to officially unveil

04:47a memorial plaque to yuri and drop off a long time former soviet kgb chief was one of the people

04:53instrumental in the 1956 invasion of hungary who was somebody who prioritized uh the suppression of

05:01domestic dissent when he was chairman of the kgb somebody who embodied everything that was wrong

05:05with the communist system and it is to this man that vladimir putin chose to unveil a memorial

05:10plaque in russia symbols are important in russia symbols matter and i had no more questions uh he

05:15could not have chosen a more potent symbol to signal the direction of his future rule and just in case

05:19anybody had uh still had questions in the first year of his presidency mr putin reinstated

05:25the stalin era soviet national anthem as the national anthem of the russian federation what do you think

05:30when you heard the likes of uh us envoy steve whitkoff praise vladimir putin and say oh he prayed for

05:37donald trump when he got shot at during one of his um rallies and that he's actually a good guy

05:43look vladimir putin of course is a former kgb officer and as he once himself publicly admitted the

05:48favorite part of his job was recruiting people and to be a successful recruiter you need to know

05:54what your interlocutor sort of what kind of person he or she is and you need to sort of get

05:58in their trust and that's exactly what he used when he came to power george w bush was a devout

06:04christian is a devout christian and so when putin met with him he told him the story about a cross

06:09that mother had given him that you know survived in this massive fire at his dacha and whatever else

06:15and that's when president bush came out and said he he looked into his eyes and so his soul and you

06:20know i think he rightly calculated putin did that the best way to do this with donald trump is through

06:25personal flattery and that's exactly what he did with that conversation about praying for him

06:30um and also of course uh giving him a painting that mr whitkov brought to to washington i mean look

06:38it's these are tricks that have been used by soviet and not just soviet security services for for

06:44decades it's incomprehensible to me how serious people can fall for this kind of stuff in the 21st

06:50century so look let's look at the opposition because i know in for a long time you are very

06:54optimistic about the future of russia i mean i still am yeah that's the thing because it doesn't look

06:59like there's any hope for optimism putin is alive and well because i remember for a long time people

07:03kind of thought that he might have cancer and so on and there's no doesn't look at there's any chance

07:08of him being overthrown uh bergosian sort of tried that and and failed i'm not just a politician i'm

07:14also a historian by my education and the one thing we know very clearly from the history of russia

07:18is that all major political change in our country happens like this right swiftly suddenly and

07:24completely unexpectedly both the czarist regime at the beginning of the 20th century and the

07:29communist regime at the end of the 20th century went down in three days literally not a metaphor

07:33this is how things happen in russia none of us knows when or how change will come what we do know

07:39is that nothing is forever and everything that had a beginning will have an end and every

07:44dictatorship in the history of the world has fallen do you have any ideas that there

07:48may be anyone within the regime that would be willing to overthrow putin what i do know for

07:55sure is that there are many people in russia inside russia today who completely disagree with this regime

08:00who categorically oppose this war of aggression and you know when i was in prison i would receive

08:04thousands of letters from all over the country every month from people i'd never met from towns

08:08and cities i've never been to some of them i hadn't even heard of and these were the people

08:11who took the time and the risk by the way to write to somebody like me you know an enemy of the

08:16people using the official prison correspondence get through to you some did some didn't but many did

08:20because they have to go through prison censorship and of course you need to leave all your contact

08:23details and so on and people wrote to say that they think like i do they think the same of this

08:30war as i do and you will remember last year in 2024 we had a so-called presidential election in russia

08:37with you know a circus with putin and a couple of pre-approved clowns running alongside him on the

08:41ballot and then suddenly there was this guy this candidate a former member of parliament and a

08:45lawyer by the name of boris nadezhdin who announced that he would run as the anti-war presidential

08:51candidate saying he's against the war in ukraine and he would end it on day one and the public

08:56response was just unimaginable suddenly all over russia in large cities and small towns you would see

09:02hours-long queues of people standing at his campaign offices to sign the ballot nominating petitions

09:08because you need to get a certain number signatures to be registered as a candidate and this was

09:12happening all over the country and you know i would see in the letters people would send me the

09:17photographs from those uh from those long lines and and people were saying how important it was for

09:22them absolutely because you know the putin propaganda tries to convince everybody both in

09:26russia and in the west that you know the russian society is this monolith that everybody supports

09:31putin everybody backs the war and of course he was not allowed on the ballot yeah as usually happens

09:35in russia but that was besides the point because suddenly people saw that there were people like

09:39me that they were not alone just final question because you know you're obviously a historian as

09:42well what was it like to hear you're being sent to prison in siberia because we hear of siberia

09:47from the cold war from the soviet union and just even the image of it straight away it's just

09:53cruelty in humanity death what was it like when you heard that and what was it like being a prison

09:59in siberia i mean obviously you thought you were never coming out you were given 25 years

10:02yes i was certain i was going to die there and that exchange that took place last year was was

10:06a miracle this is the only way i can describe it but um as a historian i've of course i've read and

10:12reread in prison uh many memoirs by soviet dissidents literature uh on the stalin period of course

10:18solzhenitsyn and shalamov and and of course books going even further back in the 19th century

10:24the city where i was in prison for example omsk is a large city in western siberia

10:28this is where some of the decembrists were imprisoned back in the early 19th century

10:32this was where dostoevsky was in prison so his letters from the house of the dead was written

10:36on his experience in prison in omsk and then of course in the 20th century solzhenitsyn was in

10:41that transit prison in omsk and so on what was really astonishing to me is that how everything

10:46down to the last details is still exactly the same as it was in communist times for example

10:50alexander solzhenitsyn in the first circle he describes at the very end the route that the

10:55prisoners were taken from moscow to siberia by and they went through the kubushev transit prison

11:01kubushev today is called samara back to its original name that was exactly the route uh i was taken by

11:06the stilipin carriages which is the the russian prisoner train transports which again haven't changed

11:10in a in a century and so you know there's a saying that every historian subconsciously wishes to

11:16personally experience the subject of his study i guess be careful what you wish for if that is true

11:20that's what we're going through your head as well i'm sure at the same time as well as that you're doomed

11:24but also oh this is what how i imagined it but also we know how it ends we know that none of these

11:30regimes uh continued we know that all of these regimes fell the czarist regime fell the communist

11:35regime fell and this one the putin regime will fall absolutely any time this is the point about

11:40russia we don't know it might be in five years it might be in three months lenin in his famous speech

11:45in zurich in january 1917 said that we old folks will not live to see this coming revolution revolution

11:50happen in six weeks brilliant thank you very much for joining us on the europe conversation thank you

11:54so much for inviting me

11:55you

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