(Reuters) – Russian opposition politician Vladimir Kara-Murza was fined 50,000 roubles ($560) on Friday for not providing a full report of his conduct as a registered “foreign agent”, according to a court statement, despite the fact he is serving a 25-year term for treason in a Siberian penal colony.
People or organisations designated as “foreign agents”, a term that carries Cold War connotations of betrayal, must regularly submit detailed reports on their activities and finances.
Kara-Murza, a Russian and British citizen, was jailed for 25 years in April for treason and spreading “false information” about Russia’s war in Ukraine.
He was declared a “foreign agent” on April 22, 2022 – the same day he was placed in detention after making speeches in the United States and Europe accusing Russia of bombing civilians in Ukraine.
Kara-Murza is one of a handful of prominent opposition figures who stayed in Russia and continued to speak out against President Vladimir Putin after his full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which Moscow calls a “special military operation”.
Another jailed opposition activist, Ilya Yashin, was fined 45,000 roubles ($500) by a Moscow court for failing to attach a mandatory rider advertising his “foreign agent” status in capital letters to his posts on the Telegram messaging app.
“I don’t have any opportunity to post materials, I’m in a penal colony, and before that (I was) in a pre-trial detention centre,” the state news agency RIA quoted Yashin as telling the court by video link from his prison in the Smolensk region. “I reject the status of a foreign agent.”
Yashin, a longtime ally of jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny, was sentenced last December to 8-1/2 years in prison for statements on his YouTube channel about war crimes allegedly committed by Russian forces in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha. Russia denies attacking civilian targets.
Navalny himself, who is serving sentences totalling more than 30 years on charges including extremism, said on Friday through his associates that he had been presented with new criminal charges under a law that deals with vandalism. ($1 = 89.7875 roubles)
(Editing by Kevin Liffey)
