An Interview With Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Critic Putin Freed and Exiled

For much of the last two years, Vladimir Kara-Murza barely used his voice. A political activist and vehement critic of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, he was confined to a harsh isolation cell in a Siberian penal colony.

Now, he is using his voice as often as possible.

Since being traded to the West in August in the biggest prisoner exchange since the Cold War, Mr. Kara-Murza, 43, has been lobbying Western leaders to take stronger action against Mr. Putin. At the same time, he is trying to give opposition-minded Russians at home and abroad reasons for hope.

Mr. Kara-Murza said the need for more prisoner swaps had been among his main arguments to world leaders, including President Biden, Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany and President Emmanuel Macron of France.

“While people are listening, I feel a responsibility to speak because I feel a responsibility toward all the others who are still left back there,” he said, referring to the hundreds of political prisoners in Russia. “We need to have more of these exchanges.”

He has promoted this cause even though he has maintained that he was released from Russia against his will.

“It has always been a question of principle that a Russian politician has to stay in Russia,” he said. “Because what moral right do I have to call on my fellow Russian citizens to stand up and resist the dictatorship if I wasn’t prepared to do it myself?”