On Sunday morning July 28, the journalist Vladimir Kara-Murza (senior) passed away after a long illness. His son, Vladimir, who is also a prominent journalist and an opposition politician, announced that his father had died at “8 o’clock in the morning on his name-day.” He was 59 years old.
Kara-Murza was a historian who became a journalist. He began his career on Channel One and then in 1993, he moved to the new private channel NTV, where his close school friend, Oleg Dobrodeyev, was editor. He had his own show called “Today at Midnight,” which covered the day’s main events.
When the station was purchased by Gazprom, a number of journalists and news readers left the station, including Kara-Murza, who broke off relations with Dobrodeyev.
After NTV, he had his own, extremely popular, analytical shows on several television channels that were all eventually closed or changed under new ownership.
Radio proved to be more stable. He had a series of shows on the radio station Ekho Moskvy, the last one called “Facets of the Week with Vladimir Kara-Murza,” which was on the air from 2006 until June 2019. He hosted analytical shows on Radio Liberty from 2005.
Kara-Murza was renowned for his insightful and context-rich analysis, which put current events into the broader historical perspective, and for his calm, almost academic demeanor, which was virtually unique in Russian media.
The family has not yet announced funeral arrangements.