Released Russian prisoners vow to continue political activity abroad

Released Russian prisoners vow to continue political activity abroad

The Russian opposition activists released from jail in Russia and deported to Germany in a major prisoner swap on Thursday said they would continue their political activity from abroad.

"We will continue political activity, we understand our responsibility," Ilya Yashin, who had been imprisoned for criticising the war in Ukraine, told reporters in Bonn. "I don't know how to do Russian politics outside of Russia, but I will try to learn."

Separately activist Vladimir Kara-Murza speculated that fellow dissident Alexei Navalny, who died in a Russian penal colony in February, might still be alive had the West agreed the swap with the Kremlin sooner.

He acknowledged how difficult it had been for Germany to agree to release Vadim Krasikov, a Russian convicted of the 2019 murder of a former Chechen militant in Berlin.

"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.