Russian oppositionist Ilya Yashin exchanged against his will: 'You can't swap everyone'

Yashin told the New York Times:

"The Russian Constitution bans sending a citizen of the Russian Federation abroad without his consent. As a Russian citizen, I confirm that I do not give permission to be sent outside of Russia.”

“They [the Russian authorities] made it clear that my return would block any potential exchanges of any other political prisoners for the foreseeable future.” He said that there were many in far poorer health who should have taken his place in the exchange.

“It is unbearable to think that I am free because I was exchanged for a killer,” said Mr. Yashin, referring to Vadim Krasikov, a Russian convicted by a German court of murdering a former Chechen separatist fighter in central Berlin in 2019. After he was returned to Moscow, the Kremlin acknowledged that Mr. Krasikov was an operative of the F.S.B., one of the intelligence agencies that grew out of the Soviet K.G.B."

Readers should note the reference that 'B' makes in this post to Boris Kagarlitsky, who is also refusing to be illegally expelled from his own country.

It is impossible not to rejoice at the release of 16 political prisoners of Putin, which occurred on August 1 in Ankara. Sixteen have been exchanged. More than a thousand remain in prison. Millions remain in Russia.

What happened, of course, is a victory for humanism, the rescuing of 16 people from Putin’s dungeons. But at today’s [August 2] press conference of those released, the most powerful voice was not the voice of the "foreign agent" Kara-Murza, thanking the governments of the United States and Germany, but the voice of the "foreign agent" Ilya Yashin, crying: "I don’t want to be and die a migrant, I didn’t want to be exchanged, I was forcibly deported from my country."

A voice saying: "In my place there should be 63-year-old Alexey Gorinov, who is deprived of sleep in a penal colony, in my place there should be 17-year-old Yegor Balazeikin, who is not given medication for his autoimmune hepatitis and liver fibrosis: in my place there should be Igor Baryshnikov, whose mother died of cancer just days after he was sent to a pre-trial detention centere and who himself has cancer."

It is they who must be saved, and not the political activists who remained in Russia with full understanding of what threatens them. Political activists who understood that the day after the exchange the authorities would say that "we exchanged our spies for their spies". Political activists who understood how Russian politics are conducted in Russia.

Sixteen lives have been saved — but what should millions do? How and when should they get their freedom? In the world of Russian politics that will greet those released via exile, today there is no answer to this question. They only have the experience of two fruitless years, which has reduced politics to watching videos produced in abundance by opposition talking heads on YouTube — the experience of a mistake that can form the basis of truth.

These days everyone has been talking about how we can save as many prisoners of Russian prisons as possible, how we want to get "foreign agents" Boris Kagarlitsky, Azat Miftakhov, Daria Kozyreva, etc. released. But we all should think about why "foreign agent" Boris Kagarlitsky did not leave Russia, neither before a criminal case was initiated against him nor after his release from the pre-trial detention centre after the initial verdict.

No matter how wonderful the salvation of individual people may be, it should not turn into a general soul-saving attitude — take as much as possible out of Russia and advise those who remain to wait it out, carefully monitor their health, eat a lot, toughen up and read more books in anticipation of the "inevitable". We need to save everyone, not each one. We need universal liberation. We need a free Russia, no matter how glad we are for the release of some of its prisoners.