I have been reviewing my interview with Vladimir Kara-Murza in 2017. The FSB had already tried to kill him, twice, with poison. He would be arrested in 2022. Kara-Murza is now confined to an isolation cell in Omsk, Siberia — at IK-7, one of the worst prisons in the whole Russian system. His friends and supporters are of course very worried about his health and survival — particularly after the death of Alexei Navalny today.
Putin can kill with impunity. In fact, he will have any number of excusers in the Free World.
When Kara-Murza and I talked in 2017, Putin had already invaded Ukraine. But it was not until 2022 that he launched his full-scale invasion, his all-out assault. Here is the portion of our interview related to Ukraine:
Ukraine is important. I ask Kara-Murza to tell me why — why Ukraine is important in the context of Russia.
“The most important motivation of Mr. Putin’s aggression in Ukraine was not geopolitical. It was not related to foreign policy. It was domestic. It wasn’t about ‘sphere of influence’ or restoring the old Soviet empire, although these things might have been added benefits, from the regime’s point of view.”
No, continues Kara-Murza, “the most important motivation was domestic, at least as I see it.”
Consider: “When Mr. Putin saw those images of hundreds of thousands of people on the streets of Kiev, and those images of Mr. Yanukovych hastily boarding his helicopter and fleeing — he didn’t enjoy those pictures. It hit too close to home. Think of it: a kleptocratic strongman, forced out of power by mass protests on the streets of the capital.”
In Kara-Murza’s view, Putin fears a Ukrainian-style democratic uprising in Russia. “That may sound unlikely now. It was unlikely in Ukraine, too, until a few years ago.”
Kara-Murza makes a point I have never heard before: Democracies in Estonia, Poland, and other neighbors — that doesn’t spook Putin and his crew so much. Democracy in Ukraine? That’s another story.
“We live so close to each other. We are close as peoples, as cultures, as nations. We’ve been living together for centuries. Our languages are similar — I understand 80 percent of Ukrainian.”
A successful Ukrainian democracy? A democratic and European Ukraine? A modern, normal, democratic nation? That would set a hell of an example for Russia. It would be an inspiration for Russians.
Which is why Putin et al. are dead set against it.
Putin’s defeat in Ukraine would be a great and glorious thing for Ukrainians, first and foremost. But it would also be a great and glorious thing for Russians. It would give them a chance to escape the autocratic kleptocracy in which they have been ensnared.