Exclusive: Key British-Russian activist tells Tom Watling that even if he and other opposition leaders are killed, others will come in their place to challenge Putin, as he thanked The Independent for

Seven weeks after he was released from a Siberian penal colony in a historic East-West exchange, Kara-Murza did not say how he thought Putin would leave, but argued Russia must not squander what he said would be a narrow sliver of time to establish a democratic government,

Murza, one of the faces of Russian opposition to Vladimir Putin alongside Evan Gershkovich, sits down with The Independent for the first time since being freed in a historic prisoner swap

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that Russia possesses weapons "that will have serious implications for the handlers of the Ukrainian regime."

A close ally of President Vladimir Putin warned Western governments on Thursday that a nuclear war would ensue if they gave the green light for Ukraine to use long-range Western weapons to strike targets deep inside Russia.

The explosion would be at an old Soviet test site first used 70 years ago in the Novaya Zemlya archipelago and could be used by Vladimir Putin as a warning to the West over Ukraine