Who “poisoned” the Kara-Murza and why. Foreign doctors are trying to establish what poisoned Kara-Murza Jr.

Vladimir Kara-Murza Jr. is in an induced coma. The condition of the coordinator of the Open Russia movement, who was hospitalized on February 2, has stabilized but remains critical, said his lawyer Vadim Prokhorov. Doctors continue to perform procedures such as artificial ventilation, hemodialysis and others, he added.

Prokhorov does not expect changes in the near future for the reason that the symptoms of malaise with which Kara-Murza was admitted to the hospital, “just like deja vu,” resemble those that the politician had at the end of May 2015. Last time, Kara-Murza Jr. was sure that someone had attempted to poison him. What is known about the May incident and what enemies could the politician have?

What do we know about what happened in May 2015?

May 26, 2015 began for Vladimir Kara-Murza Jr. as an ordinary day. In one of the restaurants in the center of Moscow, he had lunch with a colleague from the PARNAS party, who later said that Vladimir was in a great mood and full of energy. Then the politician walked along the Garden Ring, then held a discussion with two colleagues in the Rossiya Segodnya building. Suddenly, during the debate, he felt ill - an accelerated heartbeat, then vomiting. When the ambulance arrived half an hour later, he could barely move. The doctors' first guess: heart attack.

But it soon became clear that this was not so. Kara-Murza spent a week in a coma. The doctors were able to save him, although at first it seemed that his condition was almost hopeless. This was followed by a six-month recovery course in the United States, where his wife and three children live. After returning to Russia, the oppositionist walked with a cane for a long time.

What really happened

This is a key question, but there is no clear answer to it. The press reported the findings of the French doctor Pascal Kintz, who discovered traces of heavy metals in the patient’s body. Kara-Murza himself says that “his official diagnosis” sounds exactly like poisoning. But Russian doctors are in no hurry to comment on what actually happened to him, noting that the issue is not only medical, but also political.

Moscow's chief toxicologist Yuri Ostapenko, answering questions from DW on February 3, refuted in absentia the assertion that poisoning was the cause of the acute illness in May 2015: "Forensic medical examination according to his statement (Kara-Murza Jr. - Ed.) could not confirm that there was poisoning,” Ostapenko said.

And yet, in private conversations, the attending doctors, according to Kara-Murza’s associates and relatives, agree that it was poisoning. But how? Nobody knows this. As Prokhorov's lawyer recently told DW, doctors suggested that the politician was simultaneously taking two medications that could be incompatible - a sedative and antihistamines. “But now he doesn’t accept them,” Prokhorov claims. Besides, where do the sedatives contain increased doses of heavy metals?

How and to whom Kara-Murza might have been displeasing

Vladimir Kara-Murza Jr., like his father, worked as a TV presenter for some time. He is a historian by training and studied at the elite Cambridge University. He entered politics early, changed several parties, all of them were in opposition to Vladimir Putin. The Open Russia movement, of which he is the coordinator, was founded by former oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

During his political career, Kara-Murza Jr. has repeatedly advocated for Western countries to impose sanctions against leading Russian politicians in power. His first serious action was lobbying in Washington for punitive measures against those responsible for the death of Russian auditor Sergei Magnitsky.

By this, according to many, he made influential enemies in the Russian establishment. “Many people were dissatisfied with Kara-Murza’s work on the Magnitsky list,” Khodorkovsky noted in an interview with the DW program “Nemtsova.Interview.” “This has hurt the interests of many people, and I think that problems associated with this are quite possible,” added the former head of YUKOS.

Context

The first case of acute illness happened to Kara-Murza Jr. three months after the murder of Boris Nemtsov. They were friends and worked together for more than ten years. Nemtsov was the godfather of Kara-Murza Jr.’s daughter.

After the murder of the politician on a bridge near the Kremlin, Kara-Murza and former Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov traveled to Washington to present to members of Congress the so-called “Nemtsov list,” which included the names of several politicians and journalists who openly called for the persecution of Nemtsov. The next time Kara-Murza advocated imposing sanctions on Moscow was after Russia annexed Crimea.

Not only the murdered Nemtsov, but also Kara-Murza himself was subjected to persecution. Together with Kasyanov, he appeared in a video in which they are both depicted in the crosshairs. The video was distributed on Instagram by the head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov.

Despite the fact that the 35-year-old oppositionist was sure that he was poisoned, and more than a year ago he submitted a statement to the Investigative Committee to initiate a criminal investigation into the incident. A criminal case, according to his lawyer Vadim Prokhorov, has not yet been opened.

Vladimir Kara-Murza Jr.,
Vladimir Kara-Murza Sr. and Boris Nemtsov

Kara-Murza Sr. about the alleged poisoning of his son and the opinion of Israeli toxicologists about the nature of the poison found in his body.

Vladimir Kara-Murza Jr. was discharged from the intensive care unit of Moscow Clinical Hospital No. 7, where he was admitted in early February after what relatives suggest was a second poisoning with an unknown poison, and was transferred to a regular ward.
The first time the politician was admitted to intensive care with signs of poisoning by an unknown substance was in May 2015. The second emergency hospitalization occurred in early February of this year.
“Present Time” talks with the father of the “Open Russia” coordinator, Radio Liberty journalist and host of the “Edges of Time” program on the “Present Time” channel Vladimir Kara-Murza Sr.

- Let's start with your son's medical history a year ago. Now in the family, do you understand what happened?
- I think that Vladimir Aleksandrovich Gusinsky is right, who because of that incident told Vovka: “You were poisoned on the Kazan-Moscow plane.” This is the most convenient way to deal with a person. A steward, whom no one knows, comes up to you, gives you coffee, and in the morning you are no longer, as a person, on earth.
Then there was a Kazan-Moscow flight. And now there was a route Tver-Moscow. But I don’t know how he drove, because he was driving someone’s car. But there was a small banquet after the screening of the film “Nemtsov”. They could have done the same there.
I can’t do it anymore: if he stays in Russia again, this is an impossible option for my wife and I (his mother, I mean). It’s impossible when you’re afraid for him every day.
The first case was before he made a film about Boris Nemtsov: on May 25, 2015, when there was no film yet, Borya was just killed in February. I think that there were people on the Magnitsky list. Take the list and check everyone who was there: which of these people called from Moscow to Kazan on May 24 - and that’s it, you can take it right away. And which of them called from Moscow to Tver on February 1 of this year. Now, if these names coincide, that’s it. I think it was either Bastrykin or Chaika - I can tell them that straight to their faces.

- But, nevertheless, there was no investigation as such?
- Did not have. As a father who was with him all the days then and all the days now, no one called me and asked me to testify. Here we can see the Investigative Committee from the window - it is located on Baumanskaya. Well, why should I walk for five minutes? I would tell them who wants to kill him and why.

- What motivated their refusal?
- This is not a refusal, I didn’t try. They just don't invite me and that's all. No one sent a summons, no one called. Once, a local police officer in the Khamovniki district, where RIA Novosti is located, called me, where Vovka fell. The district police officer began an investigation. And then he tells me: “Everything was banned from me, and all the materials were taken away from me.”
I believe that it is not difficult to find which of the officials of these two departments called Kazan that time, and this time - Tver. And to whom did the would-be killer report from there both times? I believe that no other investigative actions need to be taken. There is no need to seize my accounts, take away my phones, or steal my computer - it won’t be necessary.

- Volodya was admitted to the First City Hospital...
- No, no, it wasn’t like that then. He was taken by ambulance to hospital No. 23 Medsantruda - this is opposite the Illusion cinema, at the beginning of Radishchevskaya Street. And they said that I needed a heart transplant. They asked if I knew a cardiologist. I have one such collector - Misha Alshibaya, who collects paintings by contemporary artists - in particular, Vrubel. I called him, and he said: “Take him to me at the Bakulevsky Center.” And Bakulevsky is located to the right of First Gradskaya in the outbuilding.
I brought him, and Misha told me: “This is not our patient, he has a heart like an astronaut. Let’s quickly get him across the yard to the second intensive care unit.” The head doctor looked and said: “We urgently put in hemodialysis and an artificial kidney, otherwise he’ll be screwed in five minutes.”
Glory to God, across the courtyard from him are the sixth and eighth intensive care units, where the chief doctor at that time was Protsenko, who is now his son’s attending physician in hospital No. 7. They set it up, and he says that just five more minutes - that’s all. Zhenya and Lena - wife and mother, both were in America at that time - came to us.
I sat down next to him (he, of course, didn’t understand anything anymore, he was lying in a coma) and said: “Vov, if we don’t last until either Zhenya or mom arrives, they simply won’t understand us.” This is the formulation we came up with: if one of us hits an oak tree, then no one will simply understand us.

And he waited for them, and is still alive. And then his heart, kidneys, liver, stomach, pancreas, lungs and brain failed. Then they pumped him out, Khodorkovsky sent a plane for him, and he left for America. I have video footage of how he was treated there.
And now he's back again. And again around Borya's death. That time was two months after it, and now two months before the March of Remembrance. Vovka was preparing the march.

- How can you explain that the French doctors were unable to make a diagnosis?
- I was in Israel and saw people who were sending Vovka materials - I then cut off his toenail and hand, a lock of hair (for DNA analysis). And one of those who worked on this told me that there is poison in the French samples, but it is not clear what kind of poison it is, because it has decomposed. Only metal salts remained, like those of Sasha Litvinenko and Yura Shchekochikhin.
I really don’t want it to be a similar poison, because those two died, but my son is alive.

- After Vladimir left the hospital for the first time, how did he feel and what did he do?
- Discharged – that’s putting it mildly. Such an enhanced intensive care unit came for him. That is, not the Moscow ambulance, but the kind I saw in Israel. You can live there even if she drowns. Another week will be fine.
She drove straight up to the plane at Vnukovo, and he immediately flew to America - he flew non-stop for 10 hours.
His right arm and right leg did not work for a long time. And when he arrived again, I introduced him to my “acupuncturist” Lyudmila Yakovlevna, who works in our clinic. He then believed in acupuncture, and in America, where there were many specialists - Koreans, Chinese, his arm and leg began to work.
He walks without a stick and plays the guitar. I played, or rather, because this time we haven’t tried it yet after resuscitation. If he had played the guitar there, I would have been lying in the next madhouse (laughs).
Exactly a year was spent on medical items. Then he started making a film about Borya - this is a very expensive job, both mentally and ethically. He managed to make it for Boris’s birthday and show it on October 9 in Berlin, where pianist Yuri Martynov performed, who played Chopin’s “Nocturne” in memory of Boris Nemtsov. Vovka is the chairman of the Boris Nemtsov Charitable Foundation.
- You and Volodya’s mother had no desire to dissuade him from politics?
- What does “desires” mean? And his wife, and my wife, and his mother, and my mother - four women asked him on their knees so that he would not come to the country anymore. No, here he lives on Novokuznetskaya again, and here he was persecuted.
Glory to God, that evening, February 2, he went to spend the night with his wife’s parents. Because if he had stayed at home and there was no one in the house, we wouldn’t be talking so calmly now.
And so, thank God, he went to them. Lyusya sees that he can’t figure anything out and complains. She goes straight to the ambulance because she knows the symptoms. And well, Protsenko called the car and said that he was now the head physician not at First Gradskaya, but at the seventh, on Kolomenskaya. And immediately the taxi driver turned around, like Primakov over America, and went to Kolomenskaya. There Protsenko came down and injected him with something, from which Vovka, you see, immediately returned from the other world.

- But you talked to him? After all, he came to Russia to present the film.
- Certainly. But he never listens to me, he says: “Dad, did you listen to our grandfather Alyosha? And I won't listen to you. I want to avenge Boris." But I am for Vovka to remain alive.

- What happened the second time? When we spoke on the phone a few hours after hospitalization, you said that these could be the consequences of the first poisoning.
- No no. After that, the doctors told me not to comment on the medical part anymore, because, they say, you profess some kind of pseudoscientific views. But Zhenya, his wife, said that this was a completely new poison, fresher and its effect was stronger. But they already knew what it could be, so they didn’t lose the twenty hours that we lost the first time when we wanted to transplant his heart. They immediately injected him with what he needed, removed the toxins, and his kidneys started working on the fifth day.

- Do I understand correctly that this happened in Tver?
- Yes, either in Tver, or when he was traveling from Tver. I don't know where he ate there. But I asked him, he told me that he was at the banquet. He called it "banquet". That is, it didn’t just happen like that.

- What happened in the hospital on the first day?
- They let me into the hospital. We arrived there, he looked better, although when your child tries to raise his hands to you, he cannot and falls, even if he is 35 years old, his heart still sobs.
That time he was in so much pain that, while I was driving, he managed to chew all his lips so that only blood remained from them. Until they grew, a month passed. But at least this didn’t happen here, because he was immediately given painkillers, put on an IV and put into an artificial coma. Again the temperature jumped because of inflammation, again hemodialysis, artificial respiration, ventilation. Same deja vu.
Some harmless word “deja vu”, but it makes you want to shoot yourself when it concerns your son.

- You just returned from the clinic...
- At first, doctor Protsenko forbade me to appear in the ward, because, he says, he cries when you leave, and you say some nonsense. And they didn’t let me in for two days. And now I’ve arrived, I go into the corridor (takes a newspaper), I see him sitting by the window. “Hello,” and continues reading.
That's it, this is my Vovka, who for the third time began to spit down on his parent. Okay, so be it. I'm glad. If only he were alive.

- Should he now be transferred from intensive care to a regular ward?
- Well, of course, he has nothing to do there.

- Will you in the family insist that he leave Russia?
- Certainly. And he didn’t even leave Russia, but so that he would be given the same job in Open Russia, but that his office would be, for example, either in Geneva or in Prague, like our Olya Pispanen (Külle Pispanen is Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s press secretary) , or in America in general - in Congress, because they saw how Congress reacted to his situation.
Everyone there knows him by sight, the whole hall stood up when McCain read the prayer. He knows all the senators, he speaks excellent English, and he would be more useful there than here. And there he will replenish the “Magnitsky list”, and he compiles the “Savchenko list”, and the “Nemtsov list” - those journalists who contributed to Boris being shot.
Now the march will take place, and we will understand who wins. Again, Putin's elections for next year. Vovka, of course, would like to participate in the elections, but he has no right, because he is an English “cardboard”, he is an English subject.

- Would he like to participate as a presidential candidate?
- Of course of course. He would run for both the presidency and the Duma. They had 15 people running, including Masha Baronova. But not a single one hit. They only got a few people into local meetings: the Legislative Assembly in St. Petersburg, and a few more people in other places. But no one got into the big Duma.
And therefore Vovka will now be an assistant to the deputy of the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly Boris Vishnevsky. That is, it will not be possible to beat him only on the territory of Leningrad and the Leningrad region, but in Moscow it is always possible. (Laughs).

- How did the family react to McCain’s statement in Congress, and does Volodya himself know about the statement?
- I'm afraid he doesn't know. Zhenya and Lena are afraid that he will worry. When he sees him, he will understand that it would be better for him to work there than in Moscow.

Journalist and politician Vladimir Kara-Murza Jr. finds himself in severe poisoning for the second time in 2 years. Last time he said that he was deliberately poisoned and demanded that a criminal case be opened into the assassination attempt. The politician’s wife, Evgenia Kara-Murza, said in an interview with the BBC that the current situation again resembles a deliberate poisoning. According to Evgenia, she is awaiting a response from French and Israeli toxicology experts.

“Vladimir’s heart rate increased greatly and he began to have difficulty breathing. He was taken to the hospital, and a few hours later his organs began to fail again. Everything was the same as last time,” Kara-Murza noted. “The official diagnosis is severe intoxication with an unknown substance. In other words, it is poisoning. Everything looks like deliberate poisoning, since there are no other options left, we checked everything,” says Evgenia.

According to her, samples of her husband's fingernails, hair and blood samples have been sent to both for toxicological testing, which they hope "will help answer at least some of the questions." “Vladimir’s activities are very annoying to many people. It is extremely difficult to guess who exactly might be behind this. We know that the current situation is such that opposition leaders can be shot right next to the Kremlin, thrown behind bars, or poisoned. Anything can happen to people who decide to oppose the Russian president,” Evgenia Kara-Murza told a BBC journalist.

“Naturally, I was scared to death. “I was always very afraid for him, even before the first case when he was poisoned, because I knew what his job was, what he did and what exactly his activities were,” said Evgenia. “But he really believes in what he does.” He deeply believes that he can make a difference. Believes that through commitment and determination, he can win and achieve what he stands for.”

Who is Kara-Murza?

Vladimir Kara-Murza was born in 1981 in the family of a Russian journalist, famous television presenter Vladimir Kara-Murza. Kara-Murza Jr. received his education in. While studying at Cambridge University, he was noted as one of the best students. Vladimir graduated from Trinity College, part of the university, with a degree in history. During his studies, he worked as a correspondent for the Kommersant and Novye Izvestia publications in London. Then he headed the bureau of the RTVI television channel for a long period of time. In 2012 (after the channel changed its owner), Kara-Murza was fired.

Vladimir Kara-Murza Jr. became interested in politics very early. Back in 1999, the year he came of age, the guy joined the Democratic Choice party, founded by Yegor Gaidar. In 2000, Kara-Murza became an adviser to one of the leaders of the political force "Union of Right Forces", the State Duma. After Nemtsov’s death in 2015, Kara-Murza headed the foundation named after him. Last year he released it under the name “Nemtsov”.

In 2003, Kara-Murza himself ran for the State Duma, but lost in his district to Vladimir Gruzdev, a candidate from United Russia. On the eve of the presidential elections in 2008, Vladimir Kara-Murza Jr. was a member of several political structures opposed to Vladimir Putin. Thus, he was part of the initiative group for the nomination of dissident Vladimir Bukovsky for president. However, in the end he was not registered as a candidate.

At the end of 2008, Kara-Murza Jr. joined the Solidarity movement. In 2012, he joined the leadership of the Parnas political force. Four years later, he left Parnassus with a scandal, as did a number of other opposition politicians. In 2011, Kara-Murza Jr., together with the leaders, acted as a lobbyist for the famous “Magnitsky Act,” which was introduced against Russian officials by the European Union and the United States.

Recently, Kara-Murza has been the federal coordinator for the Open Russia of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former head of Yukos.

In May 2015, Vladimir Kara-Murza was hospitalized with symptoms of poisoning. After being discharged from the hospital, the opposition politician, citing the results of the examination, stated that the levels of heavy metals in his body were exceeded. Kara-Murza told reporters then that he considered his poisoning to be a deliberate attempt to kill him and connected the incident with his political and social activities. In this regard, Kara-Murza Jr. demanded that a criminal case be opened regarding the assassination attempt.

In 2017, Vladimir Kara-Murza was again hospitalized with symptoms of poisoning. Lawyer Vadim Prokhorov, who represents the interests of the politician, said that Kara-Murza submitted an application to law enforcement agencies at the end of 2015. Then the politician asked for an investigation into his first hospitalization, because he believed that he was poisoned deliberately. The lawyer claims that during this entire period of time - after filing the application until the next hospitalization - no active actions were taken by the investigators.

The stories of the sudden serious illness of the younger Vladimir Kara-Murza still try to give the necessary shade of danger inherent in the opposition struggle. According to the BBC, “the channel’s columnist talked with Vladimir-Kara-Murza Sr.” Who expectedly stated that his son, Vladimir Kara-Murza Jr.... well, of course, was “poisoned.”

This statement did not cause any particular surprise on the part of, if not the oppositionist himself, then at least on the part of his relatives, friends and associates; it was too expected. The hysteria has been imperceptibly whipped up all these days by various statements. We will remember about them a little later.

According to the father of the oppositionist, DNA samples have already been sent to laboratories in four different countries (apparently for the purity of the result). However, no answers have yet been received. This means that the elder cannot accurately confirm his words about the poisoning of Kara-Murza.

“It’s clear that he was bullied, but by whom, what, we don’t know anything,” the BBC quotes Kara-Murza. However, on what is such unshakable confidence based and where does it suddenly arise? After all, just recently he stated something completely different: his son ate stale yogurt or something else; the patient’s relatives do not suspect intentional poisoning. In a conversation with a columnist for Echo of Moscow, journalist Kara-Murza reports: “In any case, I dismiss the criminal version for now.” What could have changed his mind?

As we remember, on May 26, Kara-Murza Jr. was taken to the First City Hospital in very serious condition, where doctors diagnosed “acute renal failure.” By this point, Vladimir had almost fallen into a coma. In the intensive care unit where he was placed, the necessary examinations and tests were urgently carried out.

There are always clinic doctors around the oppositionist’s bed, who for two days, as the oppositionist’s father describes, “save his life.” There is no improvement, and some luminary of medical science is urgently called from Israel, a council is convened, which decides what treatment should be chosen for such a serious case. At the same time, the father says in amazement that the Israeli doctor is stunned by the level of training of Russian doctors and modern resuscitation equipment, for which... he immediately receives hundreds of reprimands “there is no point in praising Rashka!”

However, let's return to medicine. The doctors' conclusion: severe poisoning, which caused complications on the kidneys. It is impossible to immediately understand what caused the poisoning, but doctors suggest that this may be a consequence of taking some incompatible drugs.

The oppositionist’s wife Evgenia, by the way, who lives in the United States while her husband is engaged in “political struggle” in Russia, has already managed to talk with a correspondent for The New York Times, expressing, firstly, fears that her husband “was poisoned, and his life is at risk as long as he remains in Russia,” secondly, saying that Vladimir “needs urgent evacuation to a clinic in Israel or Spain,” where he can be tested and treated.

Another interesting statement from the oppositionist’s father is also interesting. “No criminal or criminal case has been initiated yet, because he is just an ordinary patient of one of the Moscow hospitals got there by ambulance - this is his status, no more. I wonder if there are always lawyers next to every “ordinary patient” in our hospitals? And they raise the world’s luminaries “to the ears” also for the sake of every “ordinary patient”? No, the point is not that the luminary has arrived: the case is really not simple, and the oppositionist’s family openly does not trust Russian doctors, which they are not even trying to hide.

So why was all the staff at the First City Hospital on “alert” because of this incident? What kind of VIP patient was brought to the clinic?

A close friend of the late Boris Nemtsov, his former adviser during Nemtsov’s tenure in the State Duma. In 2011, Kara-Murza actively participated in lobbying the Magnitsky List, even negotiated in the US Congress, spoke in Congress and the European Parliament.

Now he is a member of the political council of the Republican Party of Russia-People's Freedom Party (RPR-PARNAS) and the Solidarity movement, coordinator of Khodorkovsky's organization Open Russia. And recently, together with Mikhail Kasyanov, he brought to Washington a list of Russian journalists against whom, according to the opposition, the US authorities should impose sanctions.

As you understand, a person like Vladimir Kara-Murza, a real fighter and oppositionist, could not simply be poisoned by stale yogurt or, excuse me, take antidepressants. So, this is exactly the case when any sneeze of a citizen can be regarded as a reason to talk about “an attempt to eliminate the objectionable.” And it is quite natural that speculation about this hospitalization is already in full swing.

After all, every suitable occasion must be used to show: the bloody regime will stop at nothing! Alarming warnings immediately appeared: don’t walk the streets, don’t eat, don’t chat! And they will even offer a long list of the “poisoned”, as Masha Gessen has already done, unable to contain her ardent imagination, listing, of course, Alexander Litvinenko, Yuri Shchekochikhin, Anna Politkovskaya and Karina Moskalenko.

Masha could have recalled another list: self-beatings of oppositionists, severe poisoning as a result of excessive alcohol consumption, represented by an attempt to “poison”, and many other things invented in order to be able to cry out: we, the opposition, in “this country” live every day in terrible danger!

But maybe the reason for the oppositionist’s illness is completely different? It recently became known from sources close to Kara-Murza that he actively used antidepressants. Vladimir has recently often flown to America and it was there that doctors recommended him new antidepressants. Vladimir Kara-Murza managed to inform doctors about the start of using new drugs minutes before he fell into a coma. Is this not the source of his sudden illness?

However, nothing prevents the opposition from immediately using such a good chance and, connecting Kara-Murza’s illness with the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko with invisible threads, loudly hinting that the same trace is visible here: they tried to poison Kara-Murza, the authorities are taking revenge on the famous oppositionist !

Wait a minute, maybe it’s worth remembering that at first Alexander Litvinenko’s father, echoing Berezovsky, blamed Russian President Vladimir Putin for the death of his son. Was it? Was. But there was also something else: in February 2012, the father of Alexander Litvinenko, who was killed in London using the radioactive isotope Polonium-210, asked Russia for forgiveness for all the accusations against our country in general, and its president in particular, explaining that everything said He told them earlier because Berezovsky paid him for it.

This is how the opposition gives birth to its chimeras, “without reflecting, but simply spreading” them.

It remains to be seen what answer the father of the oppositionist, Vladimir Kara-Murza Sr., received from four different foreign clinics, where the tests were also sent with noticeable noise.

However, this is a completely different story.

Google co-founder Larry Page feared losing control of the company in 2011 and even “veiled threats” to leave because of it, Bloomberg reports, citing recently released court documents. We are talking about a lawsuit by Google shareholders over the company's issuance of Class C shares without voting rights. In particular, Page feared that the company's other co-founder, Sergey Brin, or its then-CEO Eric Schmidt would sell their voting shares, which would result in them losing control over decision-making.

It was Page's concerns that led Google to issue nonvoting shares as a special dividend to investors in 2014, documents show. Moreover, before this, Google did not hide the fact that it was important for the founders to maintain control over the company. While Google issued Class A shares with one vote each during its 2004 IPO, Page, Brin and Schmidt each had Class B shares with 10 votes. Following Google, the founders of other technology companies, including Facebook and Snap, took advantage of this technique, Bloomberg notes.

This story began at the end of 2010, when Page was preparing to replace Schmidt as CEO, and Brin became interested in risky projects of the Google X laboratory, Bloomberg writes. Google's board of directors did not immediately approve the proposal to issue a new class of shares because management wanted the decision to be made quickly and because of concerns that it would not meet corporate governance standards. As a result, negotiations lasted more than a year. In particular, Page wanted the board to allow him to receive Brin's Class B shares in exchange for Class C shares. Otherwise, Page would have to pay $8.2 billion for them. In addition, Page did not want to make large acquisitions using shares, until non-voting shares are issued to ensure his control of Google is not diminished.

“Why should I work so hard if I could lose control [of Google]?” – Page wrote to then-board member Paul Otellini, who saw in these words a “veiled threat” to leave the company.

Ultimately, in April 2012, the board of directors authorized the issuance of non-voting shares, but persuaded Google's founders to accept tighter restrictions on transferring shares to each other. In particular, none of them should obtain complete control over voting shares. The shareholder lawsuit was settled when Page and Brin agreed to allow the board to better control the sale of non-voting shares. In 2015, as a result of a business reorganization, Google became part of the holding company Alphabet, whose CEO was Sundar Pichai. Page, Brin and Schmidt are no longer actively involved in the management of the company, but still control 56.5% of the voting power.