Freed Russian prisoner Orlov says there is talk of more swaps

BERLIN (Reuters) -Dissidents freed from Russian jails under a prisoner swap between Russia and the West last week have already discussed the possibility of further exchanges, veteran rights campaigner Oleg Orlov said on Wednesday.

Orlov was speaking in Berlin at his first press conference since he was released from a Russian penal colony as part of the deal, the biggest of its kind since the Cold War.

The 71-year-old said he and the other freed Russians had talked among themselves about a follow-up exchange to win the release of more of their colleagues by Moscow. He did not say if the group, which was greeted on arrival in Germany by Chancellor Olaf Scholz, had raised it with him or anyone else.

“We had a conversation about the details among those who were exchanged, on the plane, when we were flying from Ankara to Germany,” Orlov said.

“But I can’t say anything more concrete for now because you understand that any talks about an exchange require confidentiality for a long time. I will only say that there are concrete ideas, I won’t say anything more.”

Under last week’s deal, Russia got back eight prisoners held in the West, including a member of its FSB security service convicted of murder in Germany, and 16 people were released from Russian and Belarusian jails. They included Orlov, dissidents Vladimir Kara-Murza and Ilya Yashin, and U.S. citizens Evan Gershkovich, Paul Whelan and Alsu Kurmasheva.

Rights campaigners say hundreds of political prisoners remain in Russia. They include people in poor health like Alexei Gorinov and Igor Baryshnikov, both jailed for spreading “false information” about the Russian military, as well as associates of Alexei Navalny and lawyers who defended Navalny before he died in an Arctic penal colony in February.

Orlov said if he had been given the choice, he would not have agreed to leave the country and leave others like Gorinov behind.

He himself was serving a two-and-a-half year sentence after being convicted in February of discrediting Russia’s armed forces by protesting against the war in Ukraine and accusing President Vladimir Putin of leading a descent into fascism.

Like Yashin and Kara-Murza, he said that prior to his release last week he had refused to sign a letter seeking a pardon from Putin – something he said he found “personally unacceptable”.

He said he had never wanted to leave Russia but would do his best to adjust to life in exile and continue working for the rights group Memorial, which was banned in Russia in 2021 but won a share of the Nobel Peace Prize the following year.

While in prison, Orlov said, “I had ideas, even dreams about freedom that were always bound up with Russia, with various places in Russia, in Moscow and elsewhere”.

In Germany, he said, “alas, I will be an emigre, but at the first opportunity I will go back.”

(Reporting by Daria Shamonova in Berlin and Mark Trevelyan and Filipp Lebedev in London; writing by Mark Trevelyan; Editing by Angus MacSwan)