Twice-poisoned Russian dissident Vladimir Kara-Murza testified before a Senate subcommittee in D.C. Wednesday to support sanctions against the regime of President Vladimir Putin.
Kara-Murza, a filmmaker and top official of the anti-Putin "Open Russia Party," also called on Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to meet with young opponents to the Russian president when he visits Moscow next month. Such entreaties may have played a role in Kara-Murza nearly being killed: He survived two poisonings in Moscow; one in 2015 and another last February.
Referring to the weekend demonstrations against the Putin regime in 82 Russian cities, Kara-Murza called them the “biggest since the 1990s. And the demonstrators are mostly young people — the ‘Putin generation,’” he said. “They were born and raised under him and he’s losing them.”
Asked by Newsmax if he planned to meet with Tillerson or any administration official to discuss the opposition to Putin within his home country, Kara-Murza replied that he came to the United States “primarily to meet with members of Congress from both major parties who had voiced their support when I was poisoned and say thank you.”
As to whether he would meet with anyone from the Trump administration to discuss the opposition to Putin, Kara-Murza told us “I would be happy to.”
“It is not the job of Donald Trump, [British Prime Minister] Theresa May, or [German Chancellor] Angela Merkel to affect political change [in Russia],” Kara-Murza told the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs. “We don’t ask for regime change. We ask the Western countries . . . to be ready to call them [the Putin government] out for what they are.”
Both Kara-Murza and Subcommittee Chairman Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., strongly emphasized the importance of continuing and strengthening U.S. sanctions against Russia. Pointing to the Magnitsky Accountability Act signed into law by President Obama in 2013 and targeting sanctions to individuals within the Kremlin, Kara-Murza recalled how the late Russian deputy premier and Putin enemy Boris Nemtsov called the act “the most pro-Russian law passed by any foreign parliament.”
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
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