Prisoner swap ‘encourages Putin to take more hostages’: freed campaigner

One of the Russian dissidents freed as part of a prisoner swap between Moscow and the West this week said Friday that he had mixed feelings about the deal.

The exchange represented a “difficult dilemma,” Russian liberal opposition politician Ilya Yashin told journalists in Germany.

“It encourages Putin to take more hostages,” said Yashin, who had been serving a jail sentence for denouncing Moscow’s Ukraine offensive.

Yashin had said in the past that he did not want to be exchanged, arguing that the voice of a Kremlin critic is more powerful in Russia than outside.

Jailed US journalist Evan Gershkovich and a Russian agent jailed for a Berlin murder were among two dozen prisoners freed Thursday in the biggest East-West prisoner swap since the Cold War.

In total, 10 Russians — including two minors — were exchanged for 16 Westerners and Russians imprisoned in Russia and Belarus, including five German nationals.

Kremlin critic Vladimir Kara-Murza, also let go as part of the swap, said the deal had saved “16 human lives.”
Kara-Murza, who was released from a 25-year prison sentence, told journalists that many Russians were

“opposed to (Russian President Vladimir) Putin’s war in Ukraine.”

Kara-Murza said that until Thursday, he was certain he would die in a Russian jail.

“I did not believe I would ever see my wife again. I did not believe I’d ever see my family again and this feels really surreal, this feels like a film,” he said.

Kara-Murza added that the exchange was a “drop in the ocean because so many innocent people who’ve never committed a crime in their life are being held in torturous conditions” in Russia.