Wife of jailed Russian activist Kara-Murza says she will 'never stop fighting' for him

Speaking to FRANCE 24 from Washington, Evgenia Kara-Murza said her "only contact" with her jailed husband "since his arrest in April of last year has been through his lawyers".

Although "his spirit is and has always been very strong", "his health, unfortunately, is not that good," she said of her husband. She explained that Kara-Murza has a nerve condition called polyneuropathy – a consequence of two severe poisonings in Russia in 2015 and 2017 – and that "his symptoms seem to be getting worse" in jail.

Asked why activists like her husband and jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny return to Russia despite the risks, she said: "People who protest in Russia nowadays face the entire arsenal of Soviet-style repressive techniques that include punitive psychiatry, torture, physical violence, sexual violence and prison terms going up to 15 years for just saying no to the war (...) So Vladimir that believed that it was his duty to stand with these people fighting the regime in Russia."

>> Read more: Last remaining voices of the Russian opposition are being silenced amid war in Ukraine

Asked if she would consider returning to Russia, she replied: "If I go to Russia, I will be imprisoned – not because I'm someone important, not because the authorities are afraid of me as they are afraid of Vladimir – but because they would want to hold me hostage to put pressure on Vladimir. I cannot allow for this to happen. I cannot put my husband in this situation."

Kara-Murza called on Western governments to "adopt sanctions against those people who have been proven to have been implicated in gross human rights violations". 

Asked about her husband's belief that "the day will come when the darkness over our country will dissipate", she said: