Opposition figures Ilya Yashin, Vladimir Kara-Murza and Andrei Pivovarov, who were released this week as part of the largest prisoner exchange between Russia and the West since the Cold War, held a press conference in Bonn, Germany on Friday at the office of German news agency Deutsche Welle. “We’re feeling indescribable emotions,” activist Andrei Pivovarov…
BONN, Germany — Opposition figures Ilya Yashin, Vladimir Kara-Murza and Andrei Pivovarov, who were released this week as part of a landmark prisoner exchange between Russia and the West, held a press conference at the office of German news agency Deutsche Welle on Friday. “We’re feeling indescribable feelings,” activist Andrei Pivovarov said at the start…
Sasha Skochilenko did not know what was happening as she was taken from her St. Petersburg prison cell to Moscow, where men in balaclavas escorted her onto a plane with several other prisoners. “We were accompanied by a dozen people in balaclavas,” said the 33-year-old St. Petersburg artist, who was freed Thursday from a seven-year…
Ukraine announced Friday that it received the bodies of 250 killed soldiers in one of the largest exchanges of servicemen remains since Russia invaded in February 2022. The two warring sides regularly exchange soldiers’ bodies as well as prisoners of war in rare diplomatic dealmaking involving Moscow and Kyiv. “As a result of repatriation operations,…
Law enforcement authorities on Friday arrested a senior Russian lawmaker on accusations that he ordered the murder of his business partner. Russia’s Investigative Committee, which probes major crimes, said that Senator Dmitry Savelyev “instructed his friend to organize the murder of a businessman” in August 2023. It said law enforcement agents staged that businessman’s murder,…
A man set himself on fire outside of a government service center in Moscow on Friday, Russian media reported, saying that he was hospitalized with severe burns. Eyewitnesses said they saw the man set fire to himself on the second floor of the service center located on the southwestern side of the Russian capital, according…
The Kremlin on Friday said possible talks over the conflict in Ukraine were based on “completely different principles” from negotiations over a prisoner swap deal that saw 24 people freed on Thursday. “If we talk about Ukraine and more complex international problems, there are completely different principles,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters when asked…
The Kremlin on Friday confirmed that Vadim Krasikov, freed by Germany in Thursday’s prisoner swap deal with the West, is an operative with Russia’s FSB security service. Moscow also said that the children of an undercover spy couple released by Slovenia did not even know they were Russian until they boarded the plane back to…
The widow of a former Chechen military commander gunned down in Berlin said German authorities did not inform her they had agreed to release his convicted killer in a prisoner exchange with Russia on Thursday. Zelimkhan Khangoshvili was shot dead in 2019 by Vadim Krasikov, a Russian intelligence officer who was later sentenced to life…
The United States famously does not negotiate with terrorists. But it has shown willingness on multiple occasions to sit down with enemy states to negotiate the release of both American and foreign nationals, even giving up people who threatened their own national security in return. This latest prisoner exchange, which includes a total of 24…
Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko said Friday that U.S. President Joe Biden had “nothing to do with” the biggest prisoner exchange between Russia and the West since the Cold War. Washington and Moscow carried out a historic prisoner swap on Thursday, with Russian authorities releasing American journalists Evan Gershkovich and Alsu Kurmasheva, former U.S. Marine Paul…
Authorities in Moscow on Thursday designated the prisoner rights group Russia Behind Bars and three of its affiliates as “undesirable,” making their work illegal in Russia and putting staff members at risk of jail time. Russia’s Prosecutor General’s Office banned the German non-profit Russland hinter gittern — Russia Behind Bars’ legal entity — the MRR-Fund…
President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris greeted journalist Evan Gershkovich and two other Americans Thursday as they arrived back on U.S. soil after being freed by Russia in a huge prisoner swap. Biden and Harris, who is the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee after the president dropped out of the 2024 election, were at…
Some prisoners freed from Russia and Belarus in a major swap had feared for their lives, Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Friday, after meeting a group of the detainees on their arrival in Germany. He described a “moving” encounter with the prisoners, many of whom “did not expect this to happen now,” adding: “Many feared for…