Russian President Vladimir Putin. (RIA-Novosti, Mikhail Klimentyev/AP)

“It is only our task to bring democratic change to Russia,” says Russian opposition politician Vladimir Kara-Murza. “It’s for the democratic opposition. We don’t want or need outside actors to come in and do anything.”

But, says Kara-Murza, there is much that Western democracies such as Canada can do to help Russian democracy by passing legislation in their own countries.

Russia’s political elite routinely plunders the country of billions of dollars. They operate like organized criminals: protecting their own and murderously silencing those who expose them. They rule in the style of Zimbabwe or Belarus, says Kara-Murza, but prefer the West as a safe place to store their money, buy second homes, and send their children to school. And it is in the West where they are most vulnerable.

Kara-Murza was in Ottawa this week to urge Canada to pass a private member’s bill introduced by Liberal member of Parliament Irwin Cotler. The proposed legislation would render inadmissible to Canada Russians who played a role in a particularly egregious example of Russian state pillage and brutality. Continue…