Kremlin justifies lavish ceremony for Russians released by EU

MoscowThe Kremlin on Friday justified the state welcome, with a red carpet and an honour guard, given by President Vladimir Putin at the foot of the plane’s stairs to the eight Russians who were released in the largest prisoner exchange since the Cold War, carried out last Thursday between Russia and the United States and its allies.

“This is a very important thing: a tribute to those people who serve their country and who, after very difficult trials, thanks to the hard work of many people, were able to return home,” said Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov at his regular press conference.

The spokesman revealed that Vadim Krasikov, sentenced to life imprisonment in Germany for murdering Zelimjan Jangoshvili, former commander of a Chechen separatist group, in a Berlin park, “is an agent of the FSB (Federal Security Service) and was previously a member of the elite group Alfa (the successor agency to the Soviet KGB), during which time he coincided with several of the President’s bodyguards. Of course, they welcomed him last night.”

Putin himself hugged Krasikov as soon as he got off the plane and, in an interview with American Tucker Carlson last February, referred to him as “a patriot who did his duty by executing a bloodthirsty criminal.” Krasikov’s surrender, described by Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz as “not an easy decision,” provoked mixed reactions in Germany.

Peskov also admitted that the group of those exchanged included “undercover agents” such as Anna and Artiom Dultsev, who lived in Slovenia as Maria Rosa Mayer Muñoz and Ludwig Gisch, respectively, “Argentines” of German origin. Arrested in December 2022, they rented a premises in Ljubljana and were engaged in the sale of real estate and antiques. A day before the exchange, after confessing to being spies, a Slovenian court sentenced them to one year and seven months in prison.

Putin’s spokesman said they were included in the exchange “because of the risk of having their parental rights taken away if they stayed there” and his two youngest children found out their parents were actually Russian when they boarded the plane and, since they do not speak the language, the president “greeted them in Spanish, said ‘good night’.”

According to Peskov, another of those who returned, without giving his name, was an “agent of the military intelligence directorate (GRU, in Russian). In the international press, since his arrest in Norway for “carrying out espionage work”, there is a version that he could be Mikhail Mikushin, an academic from the University of Tromso, who presented himself as “Brazilian” under the name of José Assis Giammaria.

The Kremlin declined to explain why the group included Spanish journalist Pablo Gonzalez (Pavel Rubtsov, according to his Russian passport). He was being held in Poland on suspicion of spying for Russia, although Warsaw never brought charges against him during the two years and five months he was behind bars.

“The reason for his inclusion and other details cannot be the subject of public discussion,” Peskov told the Spanish news agency EFE.

The Polish government said Friday it had released Gonzalez, whom it called a “spy with dual nationality,” and dropped the investigation into him because “Poland is a loyal member of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), a loyal ally of the United States,” according to the Polish news agency PAP.

Meanwhile, a group of human rights experts from the United Nations issued a statement in Geneva expressing their satisfaction at “the release of 16 political prisoners in Russia” as a result of the recent exchange, while denouncing that “there are still 1,372 other people in prison for expressing their political opinions and opposing the war in Ukraine.”

The signatories of the statement, including Mariana Katzarova, the Bulgarian UN Special Rapporteur for the Russian Federation, and Mary Lawlor, the Irish UN Special Rapporteur on human rights defenders, call on the Kremlin to release them.

“It is crucial to amend criminal laws and prevent their misuse to silence dissent and persecute opposition figures, human rights defenders and journalists who truthfully report on the war against Ukraine and are critical of the Russian government,” they note.