Russian opposition leader Ilya Yashin on Aug. 2 vowed to return home and build "a happy Russia," just one day after being released from jail in a historic prisoner swap.
Speaking to reporters at a press conference in Bonn, Germany, Yashin said he had fought against being released, as a life in exile would effectively end his political opposition work in Russia.
"This was my public, absolutely clear, absolutely sincere, and conscious position. I refused to leave Russia under the threat of arrest, recognizing myself as a Russian politician, a patriot," he said.
He said that he understood his imprisonment not only as an anti-war struggle but also as a fight for his right to live in his country, and to engage in independent politics there.
However, Yashin said that "it was made clear to him" that his return to Russia would preclude any exchange of other political prisoners in the foreseeable future.
Yashin was one of 24 detainees swapped by Russia and Western nations on Aug. 1, the largest such move in almost 15 years.
He was speaking in Bonn alongside Vladimir Kara-Murza, an activist and Washington Post contributing columnist, and Andrey Pivovarov, a Russian political activist who was director of Open Russia, which was branded an "undesirable organization" by the Kremlin in 2017.
Yashin said a few days before the swap, he was told he would have to sign a form requesting an official pardon from Russian President Vladimir Putin, something he said he refused to do as Putin is a "war criminal."
"When it became clear that an exchange was taking place, I wrote a statement to the head of the pretrial detention center," citing the Russian Constitution, which prohibits the expulsion of Russian citizens from Russia without their consent, he said.
"I consider this event as an illegal expulsion from Russia against my will. More than anything, I want to return home," he said.
"My goal is to return to Russia," he went on. "To achieve a peaceful, prosperous, free and happy Russia."
Yashin is a Russian opposition leader who formerly served in the Moscow City Council from 2017-2021.
Along with the late Boris Nemtsov and other opposition leaders, Yashin protested against the illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014 and publicly denounced the full-scale invasion in 2022.
In June 2022, Yashin was arrested for "disobeying a police officer" and was subsequently accused of "discrediting" the Russian military in July.
The charges stemmed from a YouTube video that Yashin made earlier that year talking about the Russian Bucha massacre, in which Russian soldiers murdered hundreds of Ukrainian civilians in a Kyiv suburb in the early weeks of the full-scale war.
Yashin was sentenced to eight and a half years in prison in December 2022 for "spreading false information" about the military. His appeal was rejected in April of the following year.
Chris York
