It’s practically the first thing Vladimir Kara-Murza tells me after being unexpectedly released in the largest prisoner exchange since the Cold War.
The Russian opposition politician says he is uncomfortably thin due to stress. He’s also still recovering from his abrupt transfer from a high-security Siberian jail to forced exile after more than two years in prison.
“It’s surreal, like I’m watching a film,” he says. “But it’s a good film,” in which he is finally reunited with his family, whom he hasn’t seen since his arrest in Moscow in April 2022.
His youngest son has been following him around, determined not to allow him out of sight.
As lawyers and families raised the alarm, rumors of a possible swap began to circulate. The convicts had no idea.
Instead, when guards broke into Kara-Murza’s cell in Omsk, he expected to be “led out to be shot,” he says. “I actually thought they were going to execute me.”
He had lately been forced to sign a plea for a presidential pardon, but he refused to beg compassion from Vladimir Putin, whom he describes as “a dictator, usurper, and murderer.”
Kara-Murza was relocated to Moscow and the notorious Lefortovo FSB prison. Five days later he was inside the bus with the other dissidents, all being escorted by FSB guards wearing balaclavas. He had been carried out to board the bus.
