'You start speaking to walls'

Vladimir Kara-Murza, who openly opposes the Putin regime and was imprisoned in Siberia, gives his first interview on British soil since being released. Tom Watling speaks to him

- Tom Watling

A British-Russian dissident and opponent of Vladimir Putin, freed in the most high-profile prison swap since the end of the Cold War, has described the brutal treatment he suffered during 11 months of solitary confinement in Siberia.

Vladimir Kara-Murza spent 23-and-a-half hours a day in a tiny cell as part of his 25-year sentence for speaking out against Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine. The 43-year-old, who served two-and-a-half years of his total sentence before being released in August, spoke of talking to walls and willing away the days “no longer understanding what’s real and what’s imaginary”.

In an exclusive interview with The Independent hours after touching down in Britain for the first time since the USbrokered prison deal with the Kremlin, the Cambridge-educated activist relived his horrifying experience in unflinching detail.

Kara-Murza said the exchange was not merely a swap but a “lifesaving mission”. The death in prison in February of fellow dissident Alexei Navalny, which he described as a Kremlinorchestrated murder, underscored the danger he was in.

“Mentally, psychologically, emotionally, just to be locked up in a cupboard day after day, week after week, month after month, without as much as saying hello to anybody, it’s really, really not easy,” he said at a hotel near the House of Commons.

“After about two or three weeks, your mind really starts playing tricks on you. You start forgetting words. You start forgetting names. You start speaking to walls. You stop understanding what’s real and what’s imaginary.”

Kara-Murza was arrested in Moscow in April 2022 – two months after Mr Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine – for giving speeches around the world about the war crimes Russia’s forces were committing against civilians.