Last Friday, the Russian activist Ilya Yashin stated that he was handed over in the prisoner exchange between Russia and the West – against his will.
Now another former prisoner comes out and says the same.
“I must say that I did not give my consent to the exchange,” writes Ksenia Fadeyeva, a former head of opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s headquarters, in a statement.
For three years, Ksenia Fadeyeva was the head of opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s headquarters in Tomsk, Siberia.
In December 2023, she was sentenced to nine years in prison and fined 500,000 rubles for being part of an “extremist organization” – a criminal case launched to oppose Alexei Navalny.
Was loaded on a bus by the FSB
Fadeyeva was one of several political prisoners extradited in the major prisoner exchange between Russia and the West. But now she says it happened against her will.
“I have to say that I did not give my consent to the exchange,” she writes in a statement Telegram.
“As you probably already know, the FSB’s special forces loaded us onto a bus and then on.”
At the same time, Fadejeva writes that she is very grateful for all the support and that she understands that many people only see the prisoner exchange as something to celebrate.
“I did not give my permission”
Earlier this week, the outspoken Russian opposition politician and Kremlin critic Ilya Yashin made a similar claim.
– I did not give my permission to be sent outside of Russia, Yashin said at a press conference in Bonn, Germany.
He does not want to describe the prisoner exchange as an exchange, instead he means that he was expelled from Russia against his will. On Thursday, he was taken from Russia to the Turkish capital, Ankara, where the actual exchange took place.
Ilya Yashin was sentenced to 8 years and 6 months in prison for criticizing Russia’s war in Ukraine.