Freed Russian dissidents conflicted after prisoner swap

Andrei Pivovarov, Vladimir Kara-Murza and Ilya Yashin entered DW's conference room in Bonn on Friday and started speaking with little fanfare.

The three Russian opposition figures, who a day earlier were still serving sentences in Russia, were among those freed in the largest prisoner exchange since the Cold War.

They arrived in Germany less than 24 hours before, and the media conference was their first chance to speak about their experiences in Russian prison and their shock at being released.

"This feels really surreal, this feels like a film, I was certain I was going to die in [President Vladimir] Putin's prison," Kara-Murza said, adding that a week ago he was in Siberia, yesterday was at Lefotovo airport and "we're here now on the wonderful Rhine River." 

I will not ask a tyrant for a favor

Yashin said it was hard to accept that he was free "because a murderer was free" — a reference to Vadim Krasikov, a Russian spy convicted of killing a former Chechen militant in Berlin in 2019, who was released as part of the deal.

Yashin and Kara-Murza both said they refused to sign confessions or statements seeking a pardon during their detention. 

"I said, I am not going to be asked to be freed, to admit any guilt, I will not go to a person I consider a tyrant, a murderer, an enemy of his own country for a favor," Yashin said. 

"I didn't sign a condition for a pardon, but I was still pardoned. We never gave our consent [to be expelled from Russia], yet here we are," Kara-Muza said, adding he also never signed any document admitting guilt or remorse. 

Hundreds of people still in prison in Russia

Yashin said he was taken out of Russia against his will and wanted to stay in the country but agreed with the swap out of concern that the exchange would be canceled.

Yashin had been imprisoned for criticizing Russia's war in Ukraine and was serving an eight-and-a-half-year sentence in Moscow.

Looking distressed at times while speaking, Yashin vowed to "continue political activity; we understand our responsibility."

"I don't know how to do Russian politics outside of Russia, but I will try to learn," he said.

Kara-Murza says many in Russia do not support war in Ukraine

"There are many people in Russia who are against the war, who don't believe Kremlin propaganda," Kara-Murza said.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning writer had been detained since 2022 and was serving a 25-year prison sentence on charges of treason related to his criticism of Putin and the war in Ukraine.

Pivovarov echoed this point and called for more efforts to help Russians, saying, "It is wrong to associate Russian people with the government's policies."

Pivovarov is a former director of Open Russia, a now-defunct opposition group linked to longtime Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was also freed from Russian incarceration in a prisoner swap brokered by Germany years ago.

Pivovarov said there were "thousands of people in Russian prisons" and that "I think they would be happy to hear that it's possible to be saved." 

He expressed gratitude to Germany, saying Chancellor Olaf Scholz met the group at the airport.

Kara-Murza said the operation was "about saving lives, not exchanging prisoners."

"Scholz is being criticized in some quarters for the difficult decision to release Putin's personal killer," he added. "But easy decisions come only in dictatorships."

Alexei Navalny honored

The three Russian opposition figures also paid tribute to the late Alexei Navalny, a prominent critic of Putin, who died in an Arctic prison in February.

Navalny had become "accustomed to the normality of torture," Pivovarov said.

"The fact that Alexei Navalny is not with us is a crime committed by Putin, who bears direct responsibility for his murder," Yashin said.

He said an officer of Russia's FSB security service told him that if he returned to Russia his "days will end like Navalny's."

Kara-Murza said when the plane departed Moscow on Thursday, his FSB guard told him, "Look out the window, it is the last time you see your motherland. But I told him, 'I am sure that I will return to Russia — a free Russia."

He also speculated Navalny might have been alive had the West agreed the swap with the Kremlin sooner. Navalny was reportedly also meant to be among the released political prisoners but died before the deal could be finished.

"It's hard for me not to think that, maybe if these processes had somehow moved quicker ... if there had been less resistance that the Scholz government had to overcome in terms of freeing Krasikov, then maybe Alexei would have been here and free," he said.

He, however, added he was sure the deal had saved "16 human lives."

Edited by: Sean Sinico