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Kara-Murza was sentenced to 25 years in prison in Siberia for “spreading disinformation” about the Russian military, following the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine. He was released in 2024 as part of a prisoner/spy swap negotiated by former US President Biden, former German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz and Vladimir Putin.
In an interview with Euronews’ The Europe Conversation he laments how Western leaders bought into a “myth” in the early days of Putin’s first term in office as president, and before that as Prime Minister. Kara-Murza said Putin was never a modernising force who “believed in reform” of the ways of the Soviet Union.
“Nothing could be further from the truth,” Kara-Murz told Euronews’ Shona Murray.
“The myth is that there was some kind of an early Putin, who was supposedly okay, you know, who believed in reform and modernisation and cooperation with the West, and then something went horribly wrong along the way,” he said.
Kara-Murza said Western governments who talk about the version of an “early” Putin do so for reasons of “self-justification”.
Kara-Murza said the true nature of Putin’s intentions for Russia were clear from the start. He recalled Putin commissioned a statue to celebrate a former KGP operative who was key in the suppression of Hungarians in 1956 who attempted to rise against the Soviet Union’s brutal rule in their country.
“I remember very well the day I understood exactly who that man was and what direction he would take our country,” said Kara-Murza.
“On the 20th of December, 1999, this was before he became president, he was still prime minister, he came to Lubyanka Square in Moscow at the former KGB, now FSB headquarters, to officially unveil a memorial plaque to Yuri Andropov, a long time former Soviet KGB chief,” Kara-Murza said.
Yuri Andropov was also someone instrumental in the 1956 invasion of Hungary, who “prioritised the suppression of domestic dissent when he was chairman of the KGB”, claimed Kara-Murza, adding that he was “somebody who embodied everything that was wrong with the communist system”.
Kara-Murza also warned that Putin is using the same type of flattery with Trump and his administration to dissuade them from acting against his invasion of Ukraine.
In March, Putin informed US envoy Steve Witkoff that he personally commissioned a portrait by a Russian a painter as a gift for President Trump.
Witkoff described it as a “beautiful painting” and said Putin told him he “prayed’ for Trump following the assassination attempt made against him during a campaign rally.
“He rightly calculated, Putin did, that the best way to do this with Donald Trump is through personal flattery,” said Kara-Murza.
“That’s exactly what he did with that conversation about praying for him. And also, of course, giving him a painting that Mr. Witkoff brought to Washington,” he said.
“I mean, look, these are tricks that have been used by Soviet, and not just Soviet security services, for decades,” he said, adding: “Incomprehensible to me how serious people can fall for this kind of stuff in the 21st century.”
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