Luncheon and Conversation with Vladimir and Evgenia Kara-Murza

About the speakers

Vladimir Kara-Murza

Free Russia Foundation, Vice President
Recently Released Political Prisoner

Vladimir Kara-Murza is a Russian politician, author, historian, and former political prisoner. A close colleague of the slain opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, he has served as deputy leader of the People’s Freedom Party and was a candidate for the Russian Parliament. Leading diplomatic efforts on behalf of the opposition, Kara-Murza played a key role in the adoption of Magnitsky sanctions against top Russian officials by the United States, United Kingdom, European Union, Canada, and Australia. For this work he was twice poisoned and left in a coma; a joint media investigation by Bellingcat, The Insider, and Der Spiegel has identified FSB officers behind the attacks.

In April 2022 Kara-Murza was arrested in Moscow for his public denunciation of the invasion of Ukraine and of the war crimes committed by Russian forces. Following a closed-door trial at the Moscow City Court, he was sentenced to 25 years for “high treason” and kept in solitary confinement at a maximum-security prison in Siberia. He was released in August 2024 as part of the largest East-West prisoner exchange since the Cold War negotiated by the U.S. and German governments.

Kara-Murza is a contributing writer at the Washington Post, winning the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for his columns written from prison, and has previously worked for Echo of Moscow, BBC, RTVi, Kommersant, and other media organisations. He has directed three documentary films and is the author or contributor to several books on Russian history and politics.

Kara-Murza currently serves as vice-president at the Free Russia Foundation, as senior advisor at Human Rights First, and as senior fellow at the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights. He was the founding chairman of the Boris Nemtsov Foundation for Freedom and has led successful international efforts to commemorate Nemtsov, including with street designations in Washington D.C. and London.

Kara-Murza is a recipient of several awards, including the Council of Europe’s Václav Havel Human Rights Prize, and is an honorary fellow at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He holds an M.A. (Cantab.) in History from Cambridge. He is married, with three children.

Evgenia Kara-Murza

Director, International Advocacy

Evgenia Kara-Murza graduated with honors from the Moscow State Linguistic University and worked as translator and interpreter for several non-governmental human rights organizations including the International Center for Nonviolent Conflict, Modern Russia, and the Free Russia Foundation before joining her husband Vladimir Kara-Murza, a prominent Russian politician and human rights activist, in his pro-democracy and human rights work.

As Advocacy Director of the Free Russia Foundation, Evgenia Kara-Murza helps FRF’s efforts in public diplomacy and global outreach on behalf of Russian civil society. The wife of Vladimir Kara-Murza, sentenced in Russia to 25 years for high treason in a politically motivated case, Evgenia Kara-Murza ensures the continuation of her husband’s years-long work on engaging multilateral oversight mechanisms to hold the Russian government to account over violating its international commitments on human rights, democracy, and the rule of law, and on establishing personal accountability for Kremlin officials complicit in corruption and human rights abuses.

She is part of FRF’s global campaign for solidarity with Russian anti-war and pro-democracy activists both inside and outside of the country and continues her husband’s work of being a voice of political prisoners in the Russian Federation.