"I did not give my consent to being sent outside of Russia"
In a prisoner exchange, Ilya Yashin, a Russian activist imprisoned for backing the conflict in Ukraine, claimed he had not consented to his deportation from Russia and issued a warning that President Vladimir Putin would be emboldened to take additional "political prisoners."
"I did not give my consent to being sent outside of Russia," he told reporters in Bonn.
"What happened on August 1 is not an exchange. This is my expulsion from Russia against my will. My first wish in Ankara was to buy a ticket and go back to Russia."
Yashin said he had declined to sign a request for clemency from Putin during a minute-long speech in which his face frequently displayed rage.
"It's hard for me not to think that, maybe if these processes had somehow moved quicker.. .if there had been less resistance that the Scholz government had to overcome in terms of freeing Krasikov, then maybe Alexei would have been here and free," he said.
"It is wrong to associate Russian people with the government's policies," said Andrei Pivovarov, adding that their task was to work to make Russia "free and democratic."
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