https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/04/10/vladimir-kara-murza-final-statement-court/
Russian opposition leader Vladimir Kara-Murza's moving final statement to the court, before being sentenced to a 25 year prison term for speaking out against Putin's war on Ukraine.
With Kara-Murza, as with Ilya Yashin (sentenced to 8.5 years in prison in December), I would ask Westerners who claim Russian refugees should be barred from the West because Russians aren't speaking out against the war enough, whether those critics would themselves be willing to speak out if the price was a prison sentence like the one Russian dissenters risk getting. 8.5 years in a Russian prison (to say nothing of 25!) is even worse than a sentence of the same length in a Western prison, given terrible conditions in the Russian penal system. We should not set higher standards for others than we would expect of ourselves.
Original in Russian:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/04/10/russian-vladimir-kara-murza-final-statement-court/