Russian activist speaks out in espionage case after prisoner swap

We did ask to interview Mr González via his wife, who lives in Spain and has been his most avid supporter. So far, he hasn’t replied.

Instead, he appeared on Kremlin-controlled television, filmed wandering through a Moscow suburb, reminiscing in perfect Russian about sledging on cardboard as a child.

He was born, he explains, Pavel Rubtsov – still the name in his Russian passport.

He became Pablo González when he moved to Spain with his mother in 1991. His grandfather had been evacuated to the USSR during the Spanish Civil War, so Pavel and his mother were entitled to Spanish citizenship.

It all made him ideal recruitment material for Russian intelligence, but the state TV report declared that Poland had no evidence of that.

“They threatened and pressured me,” Mr González says, in his extremely deep voice. “I asked, ‘What did I do?’ and they said, ‘You know.’ But I didn’t.”

No-one I’ve interviewed has characterised Mr González as a Putin fan, although Zhanna Nemtsova says she and he were on “different sides of the political spectrum”.

“I didn’t get any pro-Russian vibe off him,” a Polish contact said.

But on Russian TV, Mr González is quite clearly excited as he describes meeting “Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin” at Vnukovo airport in Moscow.

Coming down the plane steps, he says, he was “practising” all the way how to greet his president. “I wanted to be sure it was a strong, manly handshake,” Mr González explains, with a big grin.