Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Pulitzer Prize-winning Russian opposition politician, was released as part of a historic prisoner exchange between the United States and Russia. Speaking after the exchange, he says that when he was moved from a prison cell in Siberia to a detention center in Moscow, he thought he was going to be executed. Sentenced in Russia to 25 years in prison after criticizing the aggression against Ukraine, Mr. Kara-Murza says that the biggest difference between a dictatorship and a democracy is that in a democracy the most valuable thing is human life.
When Kremlin critic Vladimir Kara-Murza was suddenly transferred from a prison in Siberia to a detention center in Moscow, he thought he was being taken there to be executed.
He was not told he would be released as part of a massive prisoner swap with the West, the biggest since the Cold War.
“A week ago I was in my solitary confinement cell in Siberia. The night I was taken from my cell in Siberia to be transferred to Moscow, during the preparations for this exchange, I was actually sure that I was being taken to be executed. That's what I was thinking,” he says.
The Pulitzer Prize winner and one of Mr. Putin's biggest critics says that such prisoner exchanges are done to save people's lives.
“But for me, the biggest difference between a dictatorship and a democracy is that in a democracy the most important thing is human life, protecting human life and saving human life. And for those people who criticize the decisions of democratic governments, why they engage in these exchanges of prisoners with authoritarian regimes like Putin's regime, I would respectfully urge them not to speak but to think about saving human lives”, he says. .
Kara-Murza is one of 16 prisoners that Russia and its ally Belarus released on Thursday, most of whom had been jailed on politically motivated charges. The prominent Russian opposition politician was arrested in 2022 after criticizing the war in Ukraine. He was convicted in 2023 of treason and several other charges with 25 years in prison. He also escaped poisoning twice, in 2015 and 2017.
“I myself was poisoned twice by a Russian special team. This has happened to many others, opposition figures and critics of the Kremlin in Russia. And we know that these attacks have taken place far beyond Russian territory, including in Britain. So the word 'safe' is not a word that we as Russian opposition politicians have in our vocabulary. I love my country, I think Russia deserves to be a normal, modern, democratic country, I have no doubt about that. As a historian, I think that day will come and I will do everything I can, everything in my power to try to bring that day a little closer.”
Following the US-Russia prisoner swap deal, the 24 individuals included journalists, political dissidents, suspected spies, a computer hacker, a fraudster and a convicted murderer.
Russia released 16 individuals, including Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and former Marine Paul Whelan. Both faced lengthy prison terms after being found guilty of espionage in Russia's politicized legal system, charges the US government has dismissed as baseless.
Radio Free Europe journalist Alsu Kurmasheva is among those released from Moscow.
Among the prisoners Russia took in exchange is Vadim Krasikov, convicted in Germany of killing a Chechen insurgent in a Berlin park two years ago, apparently on the orders of Russian security services. Among the prisoners were two “sleeper” agents who were imprisoned in Slovenia, three convicted by the American authorities and two from Norway and Poland.
