Jailed Putin critic is moved to Siberian prison hospital

Jailed British-Russian opposition leader Vladimir Kara-Murza has been transferred to a Siberian prison hospital, his wife has said.

- ANDY GREGORY

The 42-year-old - a leading Kremlin critic who has survived two poisoning attempts - is serving a 25-year jail sentence after repeatedly condemning Russia's war in Ukraine and calling for Western sanctions against Moscow. The charges have been roundly condemned by Western nations, including the UK.

Mr Kara-Murza was transferred on Thursday evening to the hospital in Omsk prison, where he is jailed, according to his wife Evgenia, who said his lawyers had waited five hours to see him but were denied visitation rights. In the wake of Putin critic Alexei Navalny's death in an Arctic penal colony in February, Ms Kara-Murza has expressed frequent concerns about the health of her husband, whom she says suffers from a nerve condition called polyneuropathy as a result of the previous attempts on his life.

Mr Kara-Murza was arrested in April 2022, accused of spreading false information about Russia's military and declared a "foreign agent", hours after CNN broadcast an interview in which he said Moscow was run by a "regime of murderers".