Putin a "Murderer," Says Poisoned Russian Dissident

In a new interview, jailed Russian opposition figure Vladimir Kara-Murza has directly accused President Vladimir Putin of murder. Speaking to FRANCE 24, Kara-Murza called Putin "not only a dictator" but "also a murderer in a very direct and literal sense of this term." He said the president ordered the killings of opposition leaders Boris Nemtsov in 2015 and Alexei Navalny in 2024. Kara-Murza knows the risks of opposing the Kremlin. He survived two suspected poisonings in 2015 and 2017. He was later imprisoned and only freed in a 2024 prisoner swap after two and a half years in jail. The accusations come from one of the few prominent Kremlin critics still able to speak publicly. The Russian government has consistently denied involvement in the deaths of Nemtsov and Navalny.