Last Thursday’s prisoner exchange with the US was a rare victory for human rights in Russia. Vladimir Kara-Murza, the Vice Chairman of Open Russia and protégé of slain opposition figure Boris Nemtsov, was freed from his 25-year sentence for treason. Ilya Yashin, a liberal politician who called Vladimir Putin a ‘war criminal’ and said Russia’s wartime censorship laws were unconstitutional, saw his eight-and-a-half-year sentence terminated. The chairs of the shuttered human rights organisation Memorial Oleg Orlov and Sasha Skochilenko are also embracing their newfound freedom.
Despite only just escaping Putin’s draconian prisons, the eyes of these human rights crusaders are firmly on Russia’s future. Orlov has expressed cautious optimism that other prisoner exchanges will follow. Yashin and Kara-Murza have defiantly vowed to eventually return to Russia and continue their fights for freedom. Their courage should be lionised, as the hardest work of freeing Russian prisoners of conscience and combatting global repression of exiled Russian dissidents lies ahead.
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