Russia dissident freed in prisoner swap vows to return

A dissident freed by Russia in the biggest prisoner swap since the Cold War has vowed to return to the country.

Vladimir Kara-Murza told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg he thought he was being “led out to be executed” during his release in Siberia last month.

The dual British-Russian citizen realised he was one of 24 prisoners to be freed in the exchange when he was on the plane.

But in his first joint interview with his wife Evgenia in Europe since they reunited, he defiantly reveals to the BBC that he plans to return to Russia.

“You know, when our plane was taking off from Vnukovo airport in Moscow en route to Ankara on 1 August, the FSB [Russian Federal Security Service] officer who was my personal escort sitting next to me turned to me and said, ‘Look out the window, this is the last time you’re seeing your motherland,'” he told me.

“And I just laughed in his face, and I said, ‘Look, man, I am a historian, I don’t just think, I don’t just believe, I know that I’ll be back home in Russia, and it’s going to happen much sooner than you can imagine.’”

Kara-Murza, one of the Kremlin’s most vocal critics, was held in solitary confinement in a high security jail after receiving a 25-year sentence in April 2023 on charges of high treason.

The full interview will air on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg.