Vladimir Kara-Murza, a journalist in Kiev, Ukraine, claimed the Kremlin orchestrated two suspected poisonings in 2015 and 2017.
The bearded, bald 43-year-old may not be as outspoken as opposition leader Alexey Navalny, who nearly died from similar nerve agent poisoning in 2020.
However, Kara-Murza, a Harvard-educated historian, has been key in persuading Western governments to impose personal sanctions on numerous Russian officials.
He was given a 25-year sentence in Moscow in 2023 for “treason,” and while incarcerated, he won a Pulitzer Prize for his columns for The Washington Post.
Kara-Murza, who was released last year as a prisoner swap, settled in Germany and continued to campaign against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s administration and the Ukrainian conflict.
However, many on both sides of Europe’s thorniest armed conflict were stung by Kara-Murza’s remarks about the ethnicity and alleged bloodthirst of Russian servicemen last week.
In an interview with the French Senate on Thursday, Kara-Murza explained why the Russian Ministry of Defense recruits ethnic minorities and how, “[ethnic] Russians find it psychologically difficult to kill Ukrainians.
Because of the similarities between ethnic Russians and Ukrainians, we are similar people, practice the same religion, and share hundreds and hundreds of years of shared history, Kara-Murza said.
Russians and Ukrainians are ethnic Slavs whose statehood dates back to Kyivan Rus, the largest state in medieval Eastern Europe torn apart by Poles and Lithuanians.
It is allegedly simpler to kill Ukrainians to someone who belongs to a different culture, Kara-Murza continued.
His statements sparked a flurry of annoyance among Indigenous rights advocates and observers.
A former Russian diplomat claimed that “ethnicity measurement is a dead end” when assessing a person’s level of cruelty.
Boris Bondarev, who resigned from his position at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in protest of Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, claimed that the Kremlin does not specifically “recruit minorities; rather, it recruits people from the poorest regions, which are, in general, ethnic autonomies.
In the fourth year of the conflict, a multiethnic society’s activist Itelmen nation of Kamchatka, Dmitry Berezhkov, said, “Only a dull man could say that.”
He continued, “Russian liberal opposition figures, who are primarily middle-class urbanites, “drown as soon they tread on the thin ice” of issues involving ethnic minorities.
More than two-thirds of Russia’s 143 million people are ethnic Russians. The rest are minorities, ranging from the millions of Ukrainians and Tatars to the smaller, regionally autonomous Indigenous groups in Siberia and the Arctic.
The minorities coexist and mingle with ethnic Russians in rural, frequently inhospitable regions, even in those that are rich in hydrocarbons, rare earths, or diamonds.
They all rely on the Kremlin-funded television networks more than urban dwellers, frequently have no access to the internet, and watch the signing bonuses and salaries of Ukrainian servicemen as a way to escape the agony their families endure.
Recruits can expect to make up to $50,000 when they sign up for the position and earn several thousand dollars per month, which is a lot for anyone from those regions, regardless of their ethnic background.
No matter whether they are Russian or Buryat, they will never make money from it, Bondarev said.
In response to a wave of criticism, Kara-Murza claimed on Facebook on Monday that the accusations were “lies, manipulations, and slander” and that they were nothing more than lies.
The comment further tarnished Kara-Murza’s reputation, according to Berezhkov.
He claimed that “Kara-Murza’s words] used to be mistaken and could be taken as a mistake, but they are now his position.”
Another proponent of minorities rights thought Kara-Murza’s attack was a “signal for future voters” in the liberal, post-war Russia that Kremlin critics hope to resurrect.
Oyumaa Dongak, a Turkic-speaking province near China’s Tyva, believes Kara-Murza and other exiled Russian opposition leaders are “competing” with Putin.
She told Al Jazeera, “We are the ones who defend]ethnic] Russians,” not him.
Kara-Murza claimed in 2024 that the Western sanctions against Moscow following the 2022 invasion are “unfair and counterproductive” and hurt Russians in general. He desired that the West stop imposing harsher sanctions and concentrate instead on individual officials.
According to a Ukrainian observer, Kara-Murza does not want ethnic Russians who might elect opposition leaders to vote in the election to feel collectively responsible for the atrocities committed in Ukraine.
“People don’t feel bad,” he said. People won’t confess their guilt but will hate anyone who hits them, according to Kyiv-based analyst Vyacheslav Likhachyov, who has been criticized daily with moral condemnation.
He said, “The stories about the atrocities of Chechen executioners and Buryat rapists are and will continue to be popular.”
According to staged videos of them “storming” Ukrainian strongholds, Ramzan Kadyrov’s pro-Kremlin leader in Chechnya dubbed the “TikTok army.”
Their primary function in the conflict is primarily to protect occupied areas, terrorize ethnic Russian service members who refuse to fight, and torture them.
However, in Ukraine in 2022, Buryats, Buddhist natives of a sparsely populated and impoverished area close to Mongolia, have gained notoriety.
Some Buryat soldiers who tortured, raped, and killed civilians in Bucha and other towns north of Kyiv, according to human rights organizations and Ukrainian officials’ personal information.
A community activist claimed that ethnic Buryats are difficult to distinguish from other minority servicemen with distinctive Asian characteristics because Ukrainians frequently refer to them as “Buryats.”
Aleksandra Garmazhapova, who assists Buryat men escaping mobilization and fleeing abroad, said, “All Caucasus natives are seen as Chechens, and all Asians are considered Buryats.”
However, overwhelmingly Russian service members allegedly committed alleged war crimes in Bucha.
Garmazhapova was saved when Ukrainian forces began shelling Russian positions and his captors fled to a basement.
Source: Aljazeera
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