Jailed Russian opposition politician Vladimir Kara-Murza, who faces a prison sentence of up to 24 years on high treason and other charges, has been honored with an award for courage by the Berlin-based Axel Springer Foundation.
Kara-Murza's wife, Yevgenia, received the award on her husband's behalf on November 28, while the jailed politician passed on his written thanks to the foundation.
The foundation was named after German journalist and publisher Axel Springer (1912-1985). Its main activities support independent journalists, writers, and public figures around the world.
Kara-Murza, 41, was detained in April and sentenced to 15 days in jail on a charge of disobeying police. He was later charged with spreading false information about the Russian Army for talks he held with lawmakers in the U.S. state of Arizona.
Last month, a high treason charge was added to the list of offenses he faces over his alleged cooperation with organizations in a NATO member for many years. Kara-Murza has rejected the charges, calling them politically motivated.
President Vladimir Putin has moved to silence his opponents over the years through legislation that has restricted free speech and civil society in Russia. That campaign has intensified since he launched an invasion of Ukraine in late February.
In October, Kara-Murza won the Vaclav Havel Human Rights Prize awarded annually by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) to honor "outstanding" civil society action in the defense of human rights.
The son of a prominent journalist, also named Vladimir, who died in 2019, the younger Kara-Murza was a television correspondent in Washington for several years and later worked on political projects launched by former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a prominent Putin foe who now lives in Western Europe after spending more than a decade in prison.
A close associate of slain opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, Kara-Murza fell deathly ill on two separate occasions in Moscow -- in 2015 and 2017-- with symptoms consistent with poisoning.
Tissue samples smuggled out of Russia by his relatives were turned over to the FBI, which investigated his case as one of "intentional poisoning."
U.S. government laboratories also conducted extensive tests on the samples, but documents released by the Justice Department suggest they were unable to reach a conclusive finding.