The European Union (EU) welcomed the release of prisoners “unjustly persecuted” in the framework of an exchange reached by Russia and Belarus with Western countries, and called for the release of all political prisoners.
“The European Union is relieved by the release and transfer to freedom outside Russia and Belarus of several political prisoners, including EU citizens, facilitated with the help of Turkey,” said the bloc’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell.
The prisoners released in the exchange with Russia landed at the airport in the German city of Cologne, where Chancellor Olaf Scholz received them personally.
Two planes arrived in the Central European country from Ankara on Tuesday evening with most of the 16 freed prisoners on board. Only a small group of the newly exchanged prisoners flew directly to the United States.
Several dozen people were waiting in the vicinity of the airport to meet the political prisoners exchanged at the gates of Cologne airport.
Scholz cut short his vacation
The German chancellor interrupted his vacation to welcome the freed prisoners. “It’s a special moment for me,” he told reporters at the airport.
“It was very exciting, many people didn’t expect it to happen now,” he added.
Scholz handed over to Russia in the exchange at the request of the United States the Russian agent Vadim Krasikov, sentenced at the end of 2022 to life imprisonment by a German court after murdering a Georgian citizen of Chechen descent in a Berlin park in 2019, a “difficult” decision, he admitted.
The American president, Joe Biden wanted to secure the release of Wall Street Journal journalist Evan Gershkovich and former Marine Paul Whelanbut the Kremlin insisted that in order to close the exchange, Germany had to include Krasikov, something Scholz had initially rejected.
Scholz thanked other European countries, such as Slovenia and Norway, for their contribution to freeing the prisoners, and stressed that the exchange had further deepened the friendship between Germany and the United States.
Sholz: handing over Krasilov was a “difficult” but “correct” decision
The German chancellor said it was the “right decision” to hand over Krasikov to the Kremlin. “And if there was any doubt, one would lose it after speaking to those who are now free,” he explained.
“We are a society characterized by its humanism, by the idea of individual freedom and democracy, and the fact that those who have to fear for their lives for having defended democracy and freedom can also count on the protection of others is part of our image as a democratic and humanist society,” he stressed.
Among the freed prisoners who landed in Cologne is German citizen Rico Krieger, pardoned on Tuesday by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.after having been sentenced to death in Belarus for, among others, terrorist crimes, along with four other nationals.
Political prisoners released
According to the list of pardoned persons by Russian President Vladimir Putin, the relatives of those released and the video of the exchange released by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), theThe other four nationals exchanged are the German-Russian Kevin Lik and Demuri Voronin, and the Germans German Moyzhe and Patrick Schöbel.
Also arriving in Germany were 70-year-old activist Oleg Orlov, head of Memorial, an organisation that will be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022, and other human rights activists and opponents of the war, including key figures in the network of the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
Russian opposition politician Ilya Yashin and former Washington Post columnist and opposition politician Vladimir Kara-Murza, who has British-Russian citizenship and is moving to the United States, were also released.
“I wish all the best to those who have now come here. May their health recover and may they find a perspective. And I wish those who are still in Russian prisons today and fear for their freedom, for their lives and their health, that they too find a way to regain their freedom,” Scholz stressed.
“In any case, we will continue to defend democracy and freedom, we owe it to ourselves as a country, as a nation,” he concluded his statement.
Keep reading:
• US and Russia agree to prisoner exchange
• Biden praises the release of American prisoners in Russia
• Russia and the West carry out the largest prisoner exchange since the Cold War with 24 people freed