Vladimir Kara-Murza is a Russian democracy activist and the coordinator of Open Russia, a civil society and pro-democracy institute founded by Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Raised in a family with a long history of political dissent in the Soviet Union, Kara-Murza served as a campaign advisor to both Vladimir Bukovsky and Boris Nemtsov in the early 2000s. Kara-Murza was a driving force in the passage of the Magnitsky Act by the Congress and has called upon Canada and the European Union to follow suit. In addition to his political work, Kara-Murza is a filmmaker and journalist. His work has appeared in the Russian dailies Novye Izvestia and Kommersant, as well as the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and the Financial Times. He survived two poisonings in 2015 and 2017. In 2022, he was arrested, convicted on charges of treason, and sentenced to 25 years in prison.
