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Russian opposition activists freed in a landmark prisoner swap have expressed doubts about the terms of the deal, with the Kremlin saying at least three Russian agents were among those freed.
Three opposition activists – Vladimir Kara-Murza, Ilya Yasin and Andrei Pivovarov – were the first prisoners to be released and recount their experiences in detail after being airlifted to the West.
“Yesterday, 16 lives were saved. I think there is nothing more important in the world than this,” Kremlin critic Kara-Murza told reporters in Bonn on Friday (August 2).
Looking thin but smiling after serving more than two years in a Moscow prison and a Siberian labor camp, he sat next to two fellow inmates.
Both Yassin and Kara-Murza said they never signed requests for pardons or agreed to be deported from Russia and flown to Turkey, the country that helped coordinate the prisoner swap.
Kara-Murza is serving a 25-year prison sentence for treason and other crimes. But he said he had refused to sign multiple requests for a presidential pardon and had not agreed to any replacement.
“It is strictly forbidden to deport Russian citizens without their consent,” said the politician and journalist, who holds Russian and British citizenship.
“No one asked for our permission,” he added, “but we are still here.”
Forced deportation
Yassin expressed similar feelings.
“I don’t consider what happened to me on August 1 as a trade-off,” said Yashin, who has previously said he would never agree to such a deal.
“I consider this event to be an expulsion from Russia against my will,”
The opposition politician was found guilty in December 2022 and sentenced to eight and a half years in prison for spreading “false information” about the Russian military.
Yasin added: “This is a complicated dilemma because it will of course prompt Putin to take new hostages.”
The release came just hours after Russia acknowledged that some of its releases included Russian agents, including one convicted of murder.
“It’s really sad that you are getting away with it because a murderer is getting away with it,” Yassin said.
“Russian Agents”
Earlier on Friday, the Kremlin said at least three Russians released from foreign prisons as part of a swap deal were Russian undercover agents.
It was a rare public acknowledgement of the work of Moscow’s top-secret security service.
Vadim Krasikov is serving a life sentence in Germany for the 2019 murder of a former Chechen separatist commander in broad daylight in a Berlin park.
Moscow confirmed on Friday that he was an elite agent of Russia’s Federal Security Service.
Krasikov was one of the central figures in Thursday’s historic multinational exchange, and Putin had publicly lobbied for his release in an effort to get the deal passed despite resistance from Berlin.
The Kremlin, which rarely releases details of its vast intelligence apparatus, confirmed on Friday that at least two other people freed in the deal were also long-time undercover agents based in the EU.
Russian President Vladimir Putin portrayed them as returning heroes, personally thanked them for their service to the “motherland” and promised them state awards.
“Krasikov is an employee of the Russian Federal Security Service,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Friday.
He added that he had served in the agency’s elite and secretive “Alpha” unit, alongside personnel who later became Putin’s personal bodyguards.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz acknowledged on Thursday that freeing Krasikov, who a German judge said carried out the assassination on orders from Moscow, would not be easy.
In return, Berlin secured the release of five German nationals, including some with dual Russian citizenship.
“Illegal immigrant”
Peskov also confirmed that a Russian couple released from Slovenia were also spies.
Artem Dultsev and Anna Dultseva, whose two children were sent to Russia as part of the deal, had posed as an Argentinian couple running an IT company and art gallery in Ljubljana.
“The children of illegal immigrants who arrived yesterday did not discover they were Russian until they boarded the plane from Ankara,” Peskov said. “They do not speak Russian.”
“Illegal” refers to Russia’s undercover spies, who live abroad for years or even decades under false identities, gathering intelligence and sending it back to Moscow.
When the children arrived on Thursday, Putin greeted them with “buenas noches” – Spanish for “good evening.”
“They don’t even know who Putin is,” Peskov said. “This is how illegal immigrants behave, making such great sacrifices for work and devotion to service.”
To ensure their return, Putin agreed not only to release the three American citizens but also some of the country’s most vocal critics who had been jailed for opposing him.
‘wonderful’
Russia has released three American citizens – journalists Evan Gershkovich and Alsu Kurmasheva and retired Marine Paul Whelan – in a move that US President Joe Biden called a historic “feat of diplomacy”.
They had previously arrived at Joint Base Andrews outside Washington and arrived in Texas on Friday for medical examinations.
They arrived on U.S. soil Thursday night and were cheered by family and friends as they stepped off the plane, before hugging Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris separately.
A total of 24 prisoners were released, including eight from the West, 15 from Russia and one from Russia’s ally Belarus.
In a moving scene at the Air Force base, Wall Street Journal reporter Gershkovich embraced his mother and lifted her aloft as they were reunited after 16 months of captivity.
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty editor Kurmasheva, who also holds Russian nationality, ran over to hug her two children, while Paul Whelan, who has served more than five years in a Russian prison, expressed relief at finally being free.
“I’m glad to be home. I’m never going back there again,” Whelan said with a laugh.
The United States condemned the charges against the three as baseless.
Read more by Euractiv
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