The thrilling release on Aug. 1 of human rights activist, journalist, and twice-poisoned opposition figure Vladimir Kara-Murza from arbitrary detention in Russia was part of the largest prisoner exchange between the West and Moscow since the Cold War. He had been held on spurious charges of treason since April 2022, having been convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison for his anti-corruption activism and vocal criticism of the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine.
We believe the sanctions that several governments imposed on Kara-Murza’s persecutors not only played a role in his release but also can be instructive for how to use such sanctions in similar cases of arbitrary detention in Belarus, Ukraine, and elsewhere, going forward. As Kara-Murza and his wife, Evgenia, who relentlessly advocated for his freedom and that of others, have continued to highlight, thousands of political prisoners are languishing in unjust detention around the world. They include Ukrainian civilians in Russian prisons and the “more than a thousand political prisoners in neighboring Belarus” who were left out of the Aug. 1 exchange despite Belarus’s participation in it.
Vladimir Kara-Murza has long been a prominent advocate for the use of targeted sanctions to advance accountability for human rights abuses and corruption, such as those under the Global Magnitsky Act of 2016 and similar laws in other countries, as well as separate visa restriction programs the United States uses to penalize human rights abuse and corruption abroad. These sanctions programs, often referred to collectively as Magnitsky-style sanctions, can be used to impose visa bans and asset freezes on human rights violators and corrupt actors across the globe.
We at Human Rights First had the opportunity to work with Kara-Murza on sanctions advocacy when he joined us as a senior advisor in July 2020. And when he was arrested, we and other civil society organizations turned to the Magnitsky sanctions toolkit.
Multilateral Sanctions Against Kara-Murza’s Persecutors
Kara-Murza played a key role in advocating for the U.S. Congress’s passage of the original Magnitsky Act of 2012, which targeted Russian human rights violators in response to the death in custody of Russian whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky, who had uncovered a major tax fraud conspiracy. The legislation, promoted by Magnitsky’s friend and client Bill Browder, was later expanded to cover human rights abusers and corrupt actors worldwide under the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act of 2016, which was implemented by Executive Order 13818. In 2022, the Act was permanently reauthorized. As a result of concerted advocacy by Kara-Murza and others, Australia, Canada, the European Union, and the United Kingdom, also adopted similar Magnitsky-style sanctions programs.
In a rare instance of coordination, and in response to widespread calls from legislative leaders and civil society, all five jurisdictions with Magnitsky-style programs sanctioned several of Kara-Murza’s persecutors using the very tools he helped develop.
Across the five jurisdictions, a total of 32 individuals were sanctioned for their involvement in Kara-Murza’s case. Targeted individuals included Russian judges, prosecutors, law enforcement officials, and a so-called expert witness who all played a role in Kara-Murza’s arbitrary detention, as well as a relatively high-ranking official involved in the broader Russian crackdown on dissent, Deputy Minister of Justice Oleg Sviridenko. The sanctions were notable not only for their multilateral dimension and responsiveness to a coordinated civil society campaign, but also for being the first time Magnitsky-style targeted sanctions were used solely on the basis of a single person’s arbitrary detention.
The Impact of the Sanctions on Kara-Murza’s Release
While much is unknown about the complex negotiations that resulted in the prisoner exchange and Kara-Murza’s release, these sanctions likely played an important role in ensuring he was not left behind.
Beginning with Canada’s announcement of sanctions in October 2022, the multilateral sanctions were a vital step to building diplomatic consensus that Kara-Murza’s case mattered and keeping international attention on him at a dangerous time. Kara-Murza’s health was deteriorating in detention, partly due to ongoing complications from the two assassination attempts by poisoning, linked to Russian agents, that he survived in 2015 and 2017. After the death of fellow opposition leader Alexei Navalny in Russian custody earlier this year, Kara-Murza, in his own words and with good reason, was “absolutely certain” he would “die in Putin’s prison.”
Multilateral sanctions and the campaign for Kara-Murza’s release were never going to guarantee his freedom, as Navalny’s death in Russian custody showed, despite international attention and sanctions. But they did achieve several things that made Kara-Murza’s inclusion in the prisoner exchange more likely.
First, the sanctions in Kara-Murza’s case put the United States and key partners on the record that his detention was arbitrary and a sanctionable human rights abuse, and they signaled that his situation was a heightened priority for them. Second, each new round of sanctions generated additional global media coverage, providing more opportunities to keep public attention on his case. Third, the sanctions based on his arbitrary detention bolstered other avenues for civil society to strengthen the pressure campaign, such as advocacy before relevant United Nations bodies, and trying to secure a determination from the State Department that he was “wrongfully detained” under the Levinson Act. The State Department ultimately did not make that determination, which would have directed the Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs to include his case as a priority in hostage-release negotiations with Russian authorities. Nonetheless, when Navalny’s death in February 2024 reportedly prompted the United States and its partners to identify other Russian dissidents who could be included in the exchange, Kara-Murza was already established as a diplomatic priority.
The Need to Continue Sanctions After Kara-Murza’s Release
Kara-Murza is no longer behind bars, so the sanctions have served one major purpose. But there are strong arguments that the Russian officials and individuals targeted in his case should remain sanctioned. While the United States and other governments often use sanctions to encourage individual behavior change, there is no indication the persons sanctioned in this case have in fact altered their behavior with respect to Kara-Murza or otherwise. Rather, after they played their alleged parts in violating Kara-Murza’s rights, Putin simply expelled him from Russia without his consent, yet another violation of his rights under Russia’s much-abused constitution. (Having committed no crime, Kara-Murza refused to sign a request for a presidential pardon as instructed by prison officials, denouncing Putin as “a dictator, usurper and a murderer.”)
Moreover, many of Kara-Murza’s persecutors are repeat offenders who consistently abuse their positions of authority to silence dissent. As Evgenia Kara-Murza and others pointed out, some of the same judges and jailors who were handling Kara-Murza’s case had previously been sanctioned for their roles in Sergei Magnitsky’s arbitrary detention and eventual death. Keeping people on the sanctions list who have not changed their behavior will help ensure continued scrutiny of their actions and serve as a red flag to observers that any future investigations or prosecutions they are involved in should be treated with extreme skepticism.
More generally, the continuing stigma associated with these sanctions may be the only consequence that such perpetrators face for the near future. As Kara-Murza said in a recent interview following his release, “frankly, there are few things” that some Russian officials fear more than “losing their coveted access to Western countries, Western institutions, to Western financial systems.”
Looking to the Future
Even amid the relief at Kara-Murza’s release, thousands of political prisoners continue to be unlawfully held in detention in Russia and elsewhere. For these cases of human rights abuses, too, the kind of sanctions imposed in Kara-Murza’s case may be an invaluable lever for diplomacy and advocacy – especially in cases of prisoners whose families believe the spotlight would benefit them and who may lack the public profile of those who were just released.
One concrete step the U.S. government can take is to expand upon the precedent-setting nature of the sanctions in Kara-Murza’s case by issuing a presidential memorandum that firmly establishes single cases of arbitrary detention as sanctionable acts under the Global Magnitsky program and related authorities. The White House took a similar step in November 2022 with respect to sanctions for cases of conflict-related sexual violence, including under Magnitsky authorities. Doing so would convey the U.S. government’s commitment to continue using Magnitsky sanctions as a tool to respond to unjust detentions of political prisoners and other cases. It could also provide helpful guidance for members of civil society looking to submit sanctions recommendations to the government on such cases.
The United States and other governments can also build on the sanctions in Kara-Murza’s case, and others like his, by identifying and sanctioning other individuals who repeatedly participate in the persecution of dissidents and activists in Russia. With Russia and other oppressive regimes detaining “more and more” people as political prisoners simply for expressing their views, we must heed Kara-Murza’s oft-repeated words that “the worst nightmare for a political prisoner is to be forgotten,” and use every tool available to help fight for their freedom.