Russian dissident Volodymyr Kara-Murza was fined 50,000 rubles ($560) on Friday for failing to provide a full account of his conduct as a declared “foreign agent” despite serving a 25-year sentence imprisonment. , reports Reuters.

Individuals or entities known as “foreign agents” (a term used because during the Cold War it was synonymous with traitor) must periodically submit detailed reports on their activities and finances.

Russian-British citizen Kara-Murza was sentenced in April to 25 years in prison for treason and spreading “false information” about Russia’s war in Ukraine.

He was declared a “foreign agent” on April 22, 2022 – the same day he was detained for speaking in the US and Europe accusing Russia of bombing civilians in Ukraine.

Kara-Murza is one of the few prominent opposition figures who remained in Russia and continued to oppose President Vladimir Putin after the invasion of Ukraine.

Ilya Yashin, fined for an equally absurd situation

Another jailed dissident, Ilya Yashin, was fined 45,000 rubles ($500) by a Moscow court for failing to add a mandatory attachment to his messages on the Telegram messaging app that read in capital letters about his status as a “foreign agent”.

“I have no opportunity to post messages, I am in a colony, and before that (was) in a pre-trial detention center,” Yashin told the court via video link from the Smolensk pre-trial detention center, RIA reports.

Yashin, a longtime associate of jailed opposition leader Oleksiy Navalny, was sentenced to eight and a half years in prison last December for statements on his YouTube channel about war crimes allegedly committed by Russian forces in Buch.

Navalny himself, who is serving more than 30 years in prison on various charges including extremism, said on Friday through his associates that he was facing new criminal charges under the vandalism law.