Putin critic's mother urges the UK: 'Help save my son'

Elena Gordon 'lives in constant fear' Vladimir Kara-Murza, a UK-Russian citizen, will die in prison like Alexei Navalny

- TOM WATLING

The mother of Russia’s most prominent opposition leader after Alexei Navalny says she lives in “constant fear” that her son, Vladimir Kara-Murza, will die in the Siberian prison in which he is currently jailed – while calling on the foreign secretary, David Cameron, to intervene and save his life.

Speaking on the second anniversary of Kara-Murza’s arrest on 11 April 2022, Elena Gordon says that her worries over her son have grown much more acute in the wake of the death of Vladimir Putin’s most prominent critic, Navalny, almost two months ago. Navalny was also being held in a remote prison colony, in the Arctic, before he was declared dead by Russian authorities. Western leaders, including Lord Cameron, have lined up to say Putin is responsible for his death, while Navalny’s widow has said that the Russian president killed her husband.

Kara-Murza, 42, a British-Russian political activist and journalist, is serving a 25-year sentence in the IK-7 penal colony. He has been in solitary confinement for months and was moved into a small punishment cell in January. The Kremlin has accused Kara-Murza of spreading “false” information about the Russian army in speaking out about Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. It is the largest single sentence handed out to a Kremlin critic, including Navalny, since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. In reality, the long-time Putin critic merely pointed out what the rest of the world could see: the brutality of Russia’s assault on Ukraine.

“For over seven months now, my son has been held in solitary confinement in a high-security prison in Siberia. His health has deteriorated dramatically,” says Ms Gordon, who lived in England for years after moving from Moscow when her son was a teenager.