“Putin has failed." We must prepare for the Kremlin’s collapse.” “The future belongs to democracies.” He has endured 2 attempted assassinations & given a 25 year prison sentence in Russia. He was released in a prisoner exchange. The striking optimism of Vladimir Kara-Murza is inspirational.

Some of the people Lana & Bernie Dishler brought from Russia & Ukraine became my friends. One was pursued by KGB. He jumped from the balcony of a 3 story restaurant into hedges below after he discovered the man he punched in the nose was a KGB officer. He told me he had to leave. He would die in a Russian prison. 

FROM:

Wednesday, September 11, 2024

Dr. Benard Dishler my Dentist in Elkins Park, PA traveled to Russia to bring back “Refuseniks” Russian Jews. He also brought Ukrainian Jews to the Philadelphia area.

Martin Luther King, Jr., reminded us that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” 

Trump’s kakistocracy is a temporary kink in the arc of the moral universe. 

“Major political changes happen in Russia, with the snap of the fingers. Both the Tsarist regime at the beginning of the 20th Century and the Communist regime at the end of the 20th Century went down in 3 days literally speaking and nobody was prepared. That’s why so many mistakes were made. We cannot afford to repeat those mistakes. 

And so the next time there is a window of opportunity for democratic change that opens in Russia we have to be ready to seize it. 

We know that the future belongs to democracies. The future does not belong to corrupt dictatorial regimes such as the regime of Vladimir Putin. Nobody has ever been able to stop the course of history and Putin won’t be able to either.” - Vladimir Kara-Murza

Putin has already been destabilized by failing to seize all of Ukraine and the West must be prepared for the possibility of his regime collapsing, say Vladimir Kara-Murza and Bill Browder speaking to Kate Gerbeau on Frontline at the Magnitsky Human Rights Awards in London. 

“A longtime advocate for democracy, human rights and civil society in Russia, Kara-Murza was instrumental in the adoption of the Magnitsky Act, which sanctioned and froze the assets of Russian leaders complicit in human rights violations. He survived two assassination attempts by the Kremlin in 2015 and 2017 yet returned to the country to organize on behalf of Russian opposition movements like Open Russia.

His public denunciation of the Russian government’s acts of aggression amid the Russia-Ukraine war led him to face 25 years of imprisonment in a maximum security prison in Omsk, Siberia. He was released in August after a prisoner exchange deal negotiated by the United States and German governments, through which Russia released 16 prisoners. In exchange, Russia received eight prisoners…

Kara-Murza concluded by looking to Russia’s future.

“There will have to be a full and public reckoning by Russian society of the crimes committed by Putin’s regime,” Kara-Murza said, naming the war crimes committed by Putin’s regime in Ukraine, the assassination of Russian dissidents and the persecution of political prisoners.

Kara-Murza also outlined the responsibilities of the rest of the world, stating, “There will have to be a roadmap from the international community on how to assist a post-Putin Russia in their time of transition and how to reintegrate into a rules-based international order.”

“This is about the future,” Kara-Murza said. “There will be another chance for change in Russia.”

MORE AT:

The Stanford Daily

‘Another chance for change’: Russian activist released in prisoner swap condemns country’s botched democratization