The Dark is rising from the BBC World Service.

The powers of the dark are reaching out now steadily and stealthily all over this world.

Find out more at the end of this podcast.

Welcome to Hard Talk on the BBC World Service with me, Stephen Sacker.

My guest today describes herself as

an introvert who shies away from the public gaze. And yet in the past year, Yvgenia Karamurza

has felt compelled to become a vocal activist and campaigner. Her cause, the fight for political

change in her homeland Russia, but more particularly the fight

to free her husband, Vladimir Karamurza, a political prisoner in Russia since last April.

The Karamersers have been together for two decades.

When they married, Yevgenia knew that Vladimir was committed to the cause of democratization

in Russia. For safety's sake, she and their three children have been based in the US for much of the

last 20 years, but Vladimir was determined to play a role in the Russian opposition to the Putin regime.

Even after his mentor and friend Boris Niemtsov was assassinated outside the Kremlin in 2015,

Vladimir himself almost died after apparently being poisoned that same year.

He defied the medical odds and recovered only to suffer what looked like a second poisoning in 2017. All the same. Last year,

after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Karamurza decided to return again to Moscow from the US

to show solidarity with Russians protesting about the war. To no one's surprise, he was arrested,

charged with various crimes, including treason, and now he could face a 24-year prison sentence. Can opposition voices make a difference

when the Putin regime's repression is so complete? Well, Evgenia Karamurza joins me now from Washington, D.C. Welcome to Hard Talk.

Thank you very much for having me here. It's a pleasure to have you on the show, and I must begin by

asking you about the condition of your husband, Vladimir. He's been imprisoned in Russia since last April.

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