Dissidents freed in prisoner swap vow to keep up fight against Putin, recount details of release
When Kremlin critic Vladimir Kara-Murza was suddenly moved to a detention center in Moscow from his Siberian prison, he thought he was being taken from his cell to be shot
TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — When Kremlin critic Vladimir Kara-Murza was suddenly moved to a detention center in Moscow from a Siberian prison, he thought he was being taken there to be shot. Opposition activist Ilya Yashin said he was warned by a security operative that he would die in prison if he returned to Russia.
Neither was told they were being freed in a massive prisoner exchange with the West — the largest since the Cold War — when they were put on a bus to the airport Thursday, some still in prison garb.
“It is very difficult to shake (the feeling) of absolute surrealism of what is happening,” Kara-Murza, a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer who had been serving 25 years in prison, told a news conference Friday in the German city of Bonn.
In their first public appearance since their release a day earlier, President Vladimir Putin's foes vowed to keep fighting for a free and democratic Russia they could one day return to.
