Prague, Czechia – 13 June 2025 – Marcus Kolga, director of DisinfoWatch and chair of the Black Ribbon Day Foundation (blackribbonday.org), today presented the 2024 Platform of European Memory and Conscience (PEMC) Prize to renowned Russian historian, human rights champion, and pro-democracy activist Vladimir Kara-Murza.
The award ceremony took place on the sidelines of GLOBSEC 2025, one of Europe’s premier foreign policy and security forums. Kolga presented the prize alongside PEMC President Marek Mutor.
Vladimir Kara-Murza has been a leading voice in the defence of historical truth against the Kremlin’s ongoing efforts to distort it—including the denial of Soviet occupation in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, and other nations. His work highlights how, for many of those countries, the end of World War II did not bring freedom or democracy, but decades of violent repression and colonization.
Kara-Murza’s lifelong commitment to exposing historical and contemporary injustices under authoritarian rule, despite severe personal consequences, embodies the spirit and purpose of the PEMC Prize.
Below are Marcus Kolga’s presentation remarks:
I first met Vladimir in 2009, when he agreed to participate in a panel at a conference I organized at the University of Toronto. The event examined the history of the August 23, 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and the Kremlin’s ongoing manipulation and falsification of that history to support its revanchist and increasingly aggressive foreign policy.
The courage it took for Vladimir to join us—and to stand up for truth in the face of distortion—was remarkable, and entirely consistent with his lifelong commitment to democratic values, human rights, freedom, and justice.
That struggle has only become more difficult and exponentially more dangerous. Yet Vladimir has persevered, at great personal cost to himself and his family.
He was poisoned in 2015, and again in 2017, narrowly surviving both attempts on his life.
In April 2022, he was arrested in Moscow for publicly opposing Putin’s criminal invasion of Ukraine. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison and spent much of the next two years in brutal isolation. Released last summer, he has continued his courageous work, calling for democracy, human rights, an end to the war, and the liberation of all territories illegally occupied by Russia.
In his closing statement during the sham trial against him in 2022, Vladimir told the court:
“I know that the day will come when the darkness over our country will be gone. When the war will be called a war, and the usurper will be called a usurper; when those who have ignited this war will be called criminals instead of those who tried to stop it… And then our people will open their eyes and shudder at the sight of the horrific crimes committed in their names.”
It is my great honour to present the Platform of European Memory and Conscience Prize to this heroically brave freedom fighter, activist, historian, and dissident—Vladimir Kara-Murza.
