It has been a month and a half since Vladimir Kara-Murza swapped his prisoner’s long underpants and rubber flip-flops for elegant suits, but the Russian opposition leader has not yet found his former self. “a normal life”. The fierce Kremlin critic was released on August 1, along with 15 others, in the largest prisoner swap between Russia and the West since the Cold War. He had been serving a 25-year prison sentence in a Siberian penal colony since April 11, 2022, for “treason”after condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
After surviving two poisonings in 2015 and 2017, the 43-year-old activist lost 25 kilos during his detention and appeared emaciated and dark-eyed when he landed in Germany after the prisoner exchange. While he looks better today, he has yet to fully return to normal. His daily routine consists of meetings with heads of state – Joe Biden, Olaf Scholz and Emmanuel Macron, among others – and media interviews. “Until a few weeks ago, I was absolutely certain that I was going to die in this Siberian prison. Everything that happened with this exchange looks like a miracle. It is a miracle.”he told AFP during a visit to Paris this week.
It’s hard to stay “human” in isolation
During two years in detention, a good part of which was spent in the high-security Omsk prison camp, Vladimir Kara-Mourza says he experienced “in isolation for 11 months straight, without stopping, without a break”. His routine was a repetition: waking up at 5 a.m. before endless days of pacing in a two-by-three-meter cell furnished with a stool and a bunk, and flanked by a tiny barred window at ceiling height. The only distraction allowed: 90 minutes of reading and writing each day. With nothing else to do, no one to talk to, nowhere to go.
“It is not very easy for a human being to […] “stay sane in these circumstances”he says. One Friday night, he remembers hearing on the radio that Alexei Navalny had died. The news of his sudden death in an Arctic penal colony was so horrific, and his own conditions so miserable, that he says he began to think he had “somehow imagined” it. He describes spending the following weekend in extreme solitude, with no visits from lawyers or letters of support. “I don’t think I have the words to describe this feeling.he said. After months and months in isolation, your mind starts playing tricks on you.”
Deprived of regular contact with his family and other prisoners, it was above all his religious faith and his convictions that allowed him to survive, he assures: “I know that everything will be decided by Him in the end.”
“I was absolutely certain that I would be executed”
The days leading up to the prisoner swap were full of twists and turns… and oddities. On July 23, two prison guards burst into his cell and escorted him to a prison office with a huge portrait of Vladimir Putin hanging on the wall, he recalls.
When asked to write a request for clemency, Vladimir Kara-Murza thinks it is a joke.But they didn’t seem in a laughing mood.he specifies. “Generally, employees of the Russian prison system do not have a very good sense of humor.” To justify his refusal, the opponent told prison officials that he considered the Russian president to be “a usurper, a dictator and a murderer”. He was then asked to put these words down on paper, which he said he accepted eagerly.
A few days later, on July 28, a loud noise woke him up in the middle of the night, around three in the morning. The doors of his cell were suddenly opened and a group of police officers burst in. They gave him 10 minutes to get ready. “I was absolutely certain that I would be let out and executed.”recalls Kara-Murza, who was eventually taken to Omsk airport, handcuffed in a terminal in the middle of the crowd. “After months and months of isolation where I couldn’t even say hello to anyone, suddenly finding myself in the middle of an airport full of people, families with children, cafes and shops open, it was mind-boggling.”
“A scene from a Hollywood action movie”
Without further explanation, he is put on a plane to Moscow, where a few hours later a prison van comes to pick him up. When he arrives at his destination, he understands that he is in Lefortovo, a Moscow prison infamous for having housed historical figures of Russian dissidence such as Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Natan Sharansky and Vladimir Bukovsky. “Vladimir Vladimirovich, you have not been transferred to Moscowlies an FSB intelligence officer when he asks that his family and lawyers be informed of his transfer. You are still in Omsk.”
Kara-Mourza eventually gave up trying to understand what was happening. He was then held for several days in a new solitary confinement cell, which he felt resembled “to a five-star hotel” in comparison with its colony in Omsk: “There I had a bed on which I could lie down […] I had as many books as I wanted. I could write.”
Then comes August 1st. A group of officers led by the deputy director of Lefortovo prison enters his cell with bags containing some personal belongings. He is ordered to get dressed before being escorted to the ground floor. “There was a row of men standing there, their faces covered with black masks and balaclavas. It was quite an intimidating sight, like a scene from a Hollywood action movie.”he narrates.
A Last Look at Moscow
In the prison yard he sees a bus. He is told to get on board. “And there I see in each row even more men, more FSB agents with black balaclavas.” Among these men, Kara-Murza recognizes some friends and comrades in arms who have been detained throughout Russia. There is notably the famous human rights defender Oleg Orlov, who has publicly compared Vladimir Putin’s power to a fascist regime. Ilya Yashin, another critic of the Kremlin, is also on board.
“That’s when I realized what was happening.”he assures. Direction Vnukovo airport. Like the others, Kara-Mourza has his face pressed to the windows the whole way. “I was just looking at Moscow. Moscow is my hometown. I love my city.he remembers. I understood that it would be some time before I could see her again.”
Another takeoff, this time on board a government plane. A few hours later, the plane lands in Ankara, Turkey. The historic exchange takes place on the tarmac. Sixteen dissidents and Westerners, including the American journalist from Wall Street Journal Evan Gershkovich were exchanged for eight Russian nationals – including an intelligence agent convicted of murder – and two minors. Thirteen of them immediately flew to Germany.
That evening, Vladimir Kara-Murza met Chancellor Scholz, dressed in the only civilian clothes that the Russian authorities had left him: a T-shirt, long black underpants and rubber flip-flops.
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