Vladimir Vladimirovich Kara-Murza (; born 7 September 1981) is a Russian political activist, journalist, author, and filmmaker. A protégé of Boris Nemtsov, he serves as vice-chairman of Open Russia, an NGO founded by Russian businessman and former oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, which promotes civil society and democracy in Russia. He was elected to the Coordinating Council of the Russian Opposition in 2012, and served as deputy leader of the People's Freedom Party from 2015 to 2016. He has directed two documentaries, They Chose Freedom and Nemtsov. As of 2021, he acts as Senior Fellow to the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights. He was awarded the Civil Courage Prize in 2018. In April 2022, Kara-Murza was arrested on charges of disobeying police orders; later his arrest was extended after new charges of "discrediting" the military were introduced, and in October, new charges of treason were reportedly introduced against him. In October 2022, Kara-Murza was awarded the Václav Havel Human Rights Prize. Early life and education Vladimir Vladimirovich Kara-Murza was born in Moscow on 7 September 1981. He is the son of Russian journalist and television host Vladimir Alexeyevich Kara-Murza (1959–2019), an outspoken critic of Leonid Brezhnev and a supporter of reforms under Boris Yeltsin. His father was a great-grandson of Latvian revolutionary Voldemārs Bisenieks (1884–1938), and great-grand-nephew of Latvia's first Ambassador to Great Britain, Georgs Bisenieks (1885–1941; lv), both of whom were shot by the NKVD. The Latvian agronomist and publisher Jānis Bisenieks (1864–1923; lv) was their older brother. He is also related to Sergey Kara-Murza (born 1939), a Soviet/Russian historian, chemist and philosopher. They are members of the Kara-Murza family, descendants of a Tatar aristocrat who settled in Moscow and converted to Christianity in the 15th century AD. (The name in translation means "Black Lord".) Kara-Murza earned a BA and an MA degree in history at Cambridge University. With his wife, Yevgenia, he has three children. Work as a journalist, film-maker and author Kara-Murza became a journalist at the age of 16. He worked as London correspondent for a succession of Russian media outlets: the newspapers Novye Izvestia (1997–2000) and Kommersant (September 2000 to June 2003) and the radio station Ekho Moskvy from September 2001 to June 2003. Kara-Murza then briefly became foreign affairs correspondent of Kommersant (July 2003 to April 2004) and Washington correspondent for the BBC (December 2004 to December 2005). In 2002, he was editor-in-chief of the