A Moscow court sentenced oppositionist Volodymyr Kara-Murza to 25 years in prison in one of the most high-profile cases of a Russian dissident who opposed the invasion of Ukraine.

Kara-Murza, a father of three who holds Russian and British citizenship and studied at the University of Cambridge, was detained in April 2022 and accused of spreading false information about the Russian military in Ukraine. He was also later charged with “treason” for a series of public speeches he made criticizing the Kremlin’s policies and the war in Ukraine.

Kara-Murzi’s sentence is the largest ever handed down to a political opponent of Vladimir Putin, as the Kremlin continues to step up its relentless crackdown on dissidents.

In his closing speech to the court last week, Kara-Murza refused to ask the court to acquit him and said he stood by everything he had said before.

“I only blame myself for one thing,” said 41-year-old Kara-Murza, who Amnesty International recognized as a “prisoner of conscience.”

“I have not been able to sufficiently convince my compatriots and politicians in democratic countries of the danger that the current regime in the Kremlin poses to Russia and the world.”

Kara-Murza has been in pre-trial detention center since April 2022 and is a longtime opponent of Vladimir Putin. He was on the brink of death after he said he was poisoned twice, in 2015 and 2017, in assassination attempts he blamed on Russian authorities.

According to his lawyer Vadym Prokhorov, the opponent suffers from polyneuropathy and neuromuscular pathology, which are the consequences of two poisonings.

Despite increasing pressure on opponents, Kara-Murza refused to leave Russia: until his arrest, he remained one of the last known critics of the Kremlin who did not flee the country and was not imprisoned.

“I also know that the day will come when the darkness covering our country will dissipate (…), when the criminals will be those who incited and started this war (in Ukraine), and not those who tried to stop it.” , Kara-Murza said during this statement before the verdict was announced.