Russian opposition figures released in a historic prisoner swap between Moscow and the West said Friday they had never asked to be sent home and said the deal could encourage Vladimir Putin to take more “hostages.”
Russian-British Vladimir Kara-Murza, 42, Ilya Yashin, an activist active in the liberal opposition in Russia since the 2000s, and Andrei Pivovarov, arrested in Russia in 2021, were the first of the detainees released on Thursday to speak at a press conference to recount their ordeal.
It took place in Bonn, Germany, where they had arrived the day before on a German government plane, along with other freed German and Russo-German prisoners.
The exchange allowed “sixteen human lives to be saved,” Vladimir Kara-Murza said. “I don’t think there is anything more important in this world,” added this fierce critic of the Kremlin.
” Water drop “
But at the same time, he considered it “a drop in the ocean” and stressed that he had been illegally expelled from his country, without his consent. “No one asked for our consent. We were taken out of prison, put on a bus, put on a plane and sent to Ankara,” he said.
“I said from the first day behind bars that I was not ready for exchanges,” echoed Ilya Yashin, who felt that his place was in Russia.
He even considered the concessions accepted by the West to be dangerous, with Germany having released an FSB agent, Vadim Krassikov, who had been sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of a former Chechen separatist commander in 2019, in the heart of Berlin.
“In exchange for the release of a murderer, about fifteen innocent people were released. It is a difficult dilemma. It encourages Putin to take other hostages,” he said.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz acknowledged that it was a “difficult” decision, which has earned him criticism at home. The German federal prosecutor’s office itself, which is in charge of Krasikov’s case, had opposed his release. But the government ultimately overruled him.
The deal released 16 people held in Russia and Belarus in exchange for eight Russians held in the United States, Germany, Poland, Slovenia and Norway, as well as the two children of a spy couple.
FSB
The Kremlin on Friday lifted a corner of the veil on the freed Russians, acknowledging that some of them were agents of the Russian intelligence services, starting with Vadim Krasikov. Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov admitted that he was “a member of the FSB.”
“He served in Alfa,” an elite FSB unit, he told reporters. “He served with several (current) employees of the security service of President” Vladimir Putin, Peskov added.
As for the couple formed by Artiom Doultsev and Anna Doultseva, released by Slovenia where they had settled in 2017 with Argentinian passports, Mr. Peskov confirmed their membership in the Russian services.
“The children of the illegal immigrants who flew in yesterday only found out they were Russian when the plane took off from Ankara. They don’t speak Russian,” he said.
In the lexicon of espionage, “clandestines” are agents living under another identity abroad, to carry out their missions.
The couple’s minor children, who had been placed in foster care by social services after their parents’ arrest, were greeted with a “buenas noches” by Vladimir Putin as they got off the plane in Moscow on Thursday evening.
“They didn’t even know who Putin was. This is how the underground workers work and make such sacrifices,” the presidential spokesman commented.
Mr Peskov also ruled out any immediate progress in negotiations on the conflict in Ukraine following the exchange, stressing that the two processes followed “completely different” principles.
Three of the former American prisoners – Evan Gershkovich, Paul Whelan and Alsu Kurmasheva – were welcomed by Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris at Andrews Air Force Base.
Mr. Gershkovich, a reporter for the Wall Street Journalhad been detained since March 2023. Alsu Kurmasheva was also imprisoned in Russia, as was Paul Whelan, imprisoned since late 2018 for espionage.
“It was great to get on this bus today and see a lot of Russian political prisoners, not just Americans and Germans,” the American journalist exclaimed upon his arrival in the United States.
Call from Paris
The White House also revealed that it had worked for months to free the Kremlin’s former number one enemy, Alexei Navalny, before he died in February in an Arctic prison in unclear circumstances.
Thursday’s exchange was the first between Russia and the West since the release in late 2022 of American basketball player Brittney Griner, a prisoner on Russian soil on drug charges, in exchange for Russian arms trafficker Viktor Bout, imprisoned in the United States.
For its part, Paris called on Moscow to release the other people still “arbitrarily detained in Russia”, notably the Frenchman Laurent Vinatier.
For Dmitry Oreshkin, an independent political analyst, “neither side” has won from this exchange, because “Putin would never have authorized an agreement that could be interpreted as a success” among the West.