Top freed dissident says Putin used prisoner swap to exile him without consent

One of the most prominent Russian dissidents freed in a historic prisoner exchange last week is arguing Moscow exiled him without his consent and exerted diplomatic pressure to try to secure guarantees he would never return.

Ilya Yashin’s claim comes on top of complaints from several other released prisoners that they were removed from Russia without their knowledge — raising the prospect that Russian President Vladimir Putin used the swap as a convenient opportunity to rid himself of some of his most persistent critics.

Yashin was part of the biggest prison exchange since the Cold War, which saw the Kremlin welcome home a murderer, several spies and other Russians jailed across Europe, in return for freeing eight foreign or dual citizens, and eight Russian dissidents. 

While the exchange is being hailed as a major coup in Washington — partly for securing the release of reporter Evan Gershkovich and former marine Paul Whelan — it has left a more bittersweet taste among the freed dissidents.

Yashin insisted point-blank that he was flown out against his will.

At a press conference on Friday, Yashin read out a statement that he said he had handed to the prison authorities ahead of the swap stating: “As a Russian citizen, I confirm that I do not give permission to be sent outside of Russia.”

On Sunday, he followed up by saying the Kremlin had also exerted pressure on Germany to wrangle some kind of guarantee that he would never return to Russian soil.

“Of course the Germans could not give that guarantee,” Yashin said in a livestream on YouTube. “I am a free person and can at any moment fly wherever I want.”

Frustrated to be swapped

Yashin who, after the death of the late Alexei Navalny, was among the highest-profile Kremlin critics remaining in Russia, had been serving an eight-and-a-half-year sentence for denouncing Moscow’s war crimes in Ukraine. 

Both before his jailing, and after, he had been vocal about his commitment to stay in Russia as part of his battle against Putin’s regime, insisting it was his birthright to stay in his home country — even if that meant in a cell.

Since arriving in Germany, Yashin has made no secret about his frustration at being included in the swap in place of others still languishing in Russian jails who suffer from severe health problems, such as Moscow politician Alexei Gorinov, who has a chronic lung condition.

In his YouTube stream, Yashin said it had been a German initiative to include him on the list of those it wanted released to give the deal additional weight.

Ilya Yashin was part of the biggest prison exchange since the Cold War, which saw the Kremlin welcome home a murderer, several spies and other Russians jailed across Europe. | POOL photo by Mikhail Voskresenskiy/AFP via Getty Images

The Russian side, he said, responded “with great enthusiasm and asked for guarantees that after arriving in Germany I would not fly back.” He did not specify the source of the information.

A spokesperson for the German government on Monday declined to comment when asked by POLITICO if Russia had asked for guarantees preventing released opposition politicians to return to Moscow.

The German authorities, and specifically German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, have faced heat at home for releasing Vadim Krasikov, as a key part of the deal. Krasikov is an FSB agent who was serving a life sentence for murder in Germany and, as the Kremlin admitted last week, has links to Putin.

But Scholz has defended his decision, saying it was “weighed against the freedom and danger to life and limb of innocent people imprisoned in Russia and those unjustly imprisoned for political reasons.”

That sentiment has been echoed by Vladimir Kara-Murza, а well-known Kremlin critic who was among those freed amid severe concerns over his health, and who has said the trade “saved 16 lives.”

If true, Yashin’s words suggest that with the swap, Moscow was looking for more than just the release of its favorite assassin.

In shuttling abroad some of its most vocal critics, the Kremlin has rid itself of a headache, with the dissidents using their jailing as political ammunition and their supporters drawing constant attention to their plight, while also aiming to weaken the opposition. 

At least four of the eight who were released — including opposition figures Kara-Murza and activist Andrei Pivovarov, former Navalny employee Ksenia Fadeyeva аnd historian Oleg Orlov — have said they were taken from their cells and brought to Germany without their approval.

Several have also said the Russian authorities kept their foreign travel documents, presumably in order to make it more difficult for them to ever reenter Russia legally. 

“I want to go home”

So far, however, Yashin has been the only politician to say outright he wants to return to Russia. 

It is a widely held belief in Russian political circles that waging a political battle against the Kremlin from exile is a lost cause. 

“I made a conscious decision not to leave Russia in 2021 and did not flee when a criminal case was launched against me and the investigation was ongoing,” Fadeyeva, a former regional coordinator for Navalny in Siberia’s Tomsk who had been sitting out a nine-year sentence for “extremism,” wrote on Telegram on Sunday in her first public comments since the swap. 

So far, Ilya Yashin has been the only politician to say outright he wants to return to Russia. | Ina Fassbender/AFP via Getty Images

Rather than conduct mass arrests, as in Stalinist times, the Russian authorities push critics to leave the country and encourage them to stay there; for example, by launching criminal proceedings against them. 

That is also what happened to Navalny who, after successfully recovering from a poison attack in Germany, was warned he would be arrested if he flew back to Moscow, but did so anyway in 2021. 

U.S. officials last week confirmed reports that Navalny’s name had been included in initial negotiations over the prison swap. 

But, according to media reports and Navalny’s team, shortly after Putin informally agreed for him to be released, he was transferred to a faraway penal colony north of the Arctic Circle, where he mysteriously died several weeks later.

At the Friday press conference, Yashin said he was told ahead of the swap by a Russian FSB agent that if he were to return to Russia, he would await a similar fate as that of Navalny. 

He also said that Russian officials had made clear that such a move would ruin the chances of other Russians to be included in a potential future swap. 

“I fought until the very last day for my right to stay in Russia,” a visibly emotional Yashin said during the press conference. 

“Most of all, I want to go home.”