Vladimir Kara-Murza, who was released as part of a prisoner exchange, has been refused a foreign passport abroad.

The Russian embassy in the United States has refused to issue a foreign passport to politician Vladimir Kara-Murza, citing a ban on leaving the country. He announced this on his Telegram channel. In August last year, Kara-Murza was released as part of a prisoner exchange between Russia and Western countries.

According to the politician, the embassy referred in its refusal to a letter from the Federal Bailiff Service dated 2 July this year and to a document on the “temporary restriction of the right to leave the Russian Federation.”

“Effectively, bypassing the direct constitutional prohibition [that a citizen of Russia cannot be deprived of citizenship], the Putin regime has brought back the Soviet practice of depriving political opponents of the citizenship of their own country. That is, formally, of course, no one is stripped of citizenship—but it is impossible to use it in practice without a valid passport. One more minor whistle-stop on the way back to the ‘bright past,’” wrote Vladimir Kara-Murza.

• In April 2023, Vladimir Kara-Murza was sentenced to 25 years in a high-security penal colony. A criminal case was brought against him for his public anti-war speeches in Europe and the United States, as well as for organising a conference in Moscow in support of Russian political prisoners. He was found guilty under the articles concerning “fake news” about the Russian army (subsection ‘d’ of part 2 of article 207.3 of the Criminal Code), activities of an “undesirable organisation” (part 1 of article 284.1 of the Criminal Code), and treason (article 275 of the Criminal Code).
• Last summer, Russia released 16 political prisoners as part of an exchange with Western countries. Among them were politicians Ilya Yashin and Vladimir Kara-Murza, human rights defender Oleg Orlov, artist Sasha Skochilenko, and journalists Evan Gershkovich and Alsu Kurmasheva.
• At the end of last year, Russian passports were also refused to former heads of Navalny’s offices in Tomsk (a major city in Siberia) and Ufa (the capital of Bashkortostan, in the Urals), Ksenia Fadeyeva and Lilia Chanysheva, under the pretext of a “temporary restriction on the right to leave the Russian Federation.” They too were exchanged in summer 2024.