Vladimir Kara-Murza

The massive prisoner swap which led to Russia’s release of prisoners Evan Gershkovich, Paul Whelan and Vladimir Kara-Murza, among many others, is the greatest gift their families and loved ones could ever hope for — in several cases, it is a lifesaving development. But it also serves as an indication of just how much the practice has become a weapon of the world’s great powers. For my family, the news is deeply personal. Vladimir, a longtime dissident imprisoned for the crime of speaking out against the war in Ukraine in remarks to the state legislature of Arizona, was a pallbearer along with me for my father-in-law, John McCain. My wife joined with his, Evgenia, to speak to a bicameral congressional committee earlier this year to advocate for his release.

The death of Alexei Navalny has dramatically increased the risk for other key figures currently imprisoned by Vladimir Putin, whether for reasons of dissident behavior, protest against the war in Ukraine or supposed suspicion of espionage. The fact that Putin would cross this line, and do so with impunity in the midst of both the Munich Security Conference and a western influence push spearheaded by willing patsy Tucker Carlson, is a sign that we are now in a new reality — one that it is the duty of the next administration to irrevocably reverse. In the past, when the United States’s top officials identified an American citizen or important dissident held in another nation and said “do not touch this person, lest you find out what terror awaits you,” it meant something.

The death of Alexei Navalny, announced a week after Vladimir Putin's sit-down interview with Tucker Carlson and reported as senior officials gather for a security summit in Germany, is an expression of the ruthlessness of the Russian authoritarian. Add Navalny to the list of foes Putin's regime has assassinated — the most prominent since Boris Nemtsov was shot to death while crossing a bridge — and know that so long as the current regime is in power, it will continue to assassinate anyone who rises up against it. Whether they die by poison or bullet or walking in a prison yard north of the Arctic Circle, it's all the same to him. Navalny's defiant stand in opposition to the corrupt Putin regime is the definition of courage.

The legacy of John McCain was on full view in the halls of Congress this week, where a bipartisan group of lawmakers repeatedly invoked his legacy to demand that Russia release a journalist detained for criticizing Vladimir Putin. One year ago, Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Russian political dissident and journalist, was arrested by Putin’s regime on trumped-up charges of spreading false information about Russia’s military during a speech he gave in McCain’s home state of Arizona. To commemorate his detention, and to call for his release, the McCain Institute hosted an event in the nation’s capital where lawmakers from both parties — who served jointly with McCain for almost 100 years between them — rallied to Kara-Murza’s defense.

Vladimir Kara-Murza dies hard. He has withstood not one but two poisoning attempts by Vladimir Putin's government. He has withstood the targeting of Russia's officials. And he has borne the ramifications of the West's turn away from confrontation with a regime he understands for its villainy. Now, Kara-Murza is facing what could be a final challenge — a trial against him based on the 2022 laws against "misinformation" about the Russian military in the Ukraine war, by an authoritarian regime bent on silencing all its critics and sending them into the dark quiet of a cell where they will end their days. Kara-Murza is forty-one, the father of three, a former advisor to assassinated Putin critic Boris Nemtsov and a longtime advocate against the regime.