Russian political prisoner Ilya Yashin, released after a major prisoner swap, holds a press conference in Bonn, Germany.
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Russian opposition activist Ilya Yashin, freed in a prisoner swap on Thursday, pledged to continue his political fight against Russian President Vladimir Putin abroad but expressed concern about reneging on Angry at his desire to be deported.
In the largest prisoner swap since the Cold War, eight Russians, including a convicted murderer, were exchanged for 16 inmates, many of them political dissidents, in Russian and Belarusian prisons. After politician Alexei Navalny died in prison last year, Western leaders hailed it as a victory and feared for the lives of dissidents.
But Yashin, who was jailed in 2022 for criticizing Putin’s sweeping invasion of Ukraine, said he had not agreed to deportation and that others in more urgent need of medical care should leave in his place.
“From the first day I was in prison, I said I was unwilling to engage in any communication,” he told an emotional news conference in Bonn on Friday, during which he occasionally took off his glasses and fought back tears. .
His anger is not directed at the Western governments that set him free, which he says face a difficult moral dilemma, but at the Kremlin for deporting a political rival against his will.
He added: “I do not view what happened on August 1st as a prisoner exchange… but as an illegal deportation of me from Russia against my will, and I sincerely say that is more important than my desire to go home now.”
In his first public appearance since the freed prisoners arrived in Germany, he spoke alongside activists Vladimir Kara-Murza and Andrei Pivovarov.
The day after their release from prison, Kara-Murza and Yassin, who had very limited contact with the outside world, seemed particularly determined and informed about world events. All expressed contempt for Putin’s government, which Karamurza called an illegal usurper. Yashin promised to continue working “for Russia” abroad. “I don’t know how to do that yet,” he added.
Pivovarov agreed: “We will do everything to make our country free and democratic and free all political prisoners.”
Commenting on the prisoner swap, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on Thursday that traitors to the country, whom he said should rot and die in prison, were more useful for Moscow to send its own people home.
“A usurper and a murderer”
Kara-Murza recalled that when prison guards asked him to sign a petition for clemency, he picked up the pen handed to him and wrote, “I think he (Putin) is not a legitimate president, but a A dictator, a usurper”. and a murderer. “
Kara-Murza blames Putin for the deaths of Navalny and Russian politician Boris Nemtsov, who was killed in Moscow in 2015, as well as thousands of Ukrainians, including a hospital explosion in Kiev last month Children killed in the case.
Kara-Murza, who is serving a 25-year sentence, said he was convinced he would never see his wife again and would die in a Russian prison.
While he said he was happy to be free, he also expressed reservations about the manner of his departure, which he called an illegal deportation under Russian law. He also admitted that German Chancellor Olaf Scholz faced a dilemma in deciding whether to release convicted murderer Vadim Krasikov to ensure their safety.
He said the operation was “about saving lives, not exchanging prisoners.” “Schultz has been criticized in some quarters for making the difficult decision to release Putin’s personal hitman… but only dictatorships make simple decisions.”
He added that if things had been easier, Navalny might not have died.
“It’s hard not to think that maybe if these processes somehow moved faster…if the Scholz government had less resistance to overcome in releasing Krasikov, then maybe Alexei would be there here and be free,” he said.
He described torture that amounted to psychological torture. A prison doctor told him he only had between one and a year and a half to live due to two poisonings.
He said that in more than two years in prison, he was only allowed to speak to his wife once and his children twice and was held in solitary confinement for 10 months. He added that as a Christian he was not allowed to go to church.
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